Frequently Asked Questions

Questions about Home Pages

How can I change my default home page?

How to change your default home page depends on what web browser you are using.

In Netscape Navigator, go to the Options menu, and select General Preferences.... One of the options displayed is Home Page Location. Be sure to enter correctly the complete URL of your desired home page. Also check the adjacent box so your browser starts with this page, and not with a blank page.

For Mosaic, you need to specify your home page location in your ~/.Xresources file; you can create this file in your home directory if you do not have it already. Add a line such as the following (but specifying your own URL) to this file:
Mosaic*homeDocument: http://www.mit.edu/people/me/home.html
The home document will appear when you start Mosaic, and clicking the Home button at the bottom will bring you back to it. This change will take effect next time you log in. If you want the change to take place during your current login session, enter the following at your athena prompt:
xrdb -load ~/.Xresources
The change will be in place the next time you start Mosaic.

In Internet Explorer, go to the View menu, and select Internet Options.... One of the options displayed is Home Page Address. Be sure to enter correctly the complete URL of your desired home page.

Another way of changing your default home page for most browsers is by setting the environment variable WWW_HOME. One way of setting this variable is to add this line to your ~/.environment file; you can create this file in your home directory if you do not have it already. Add a line such as the following (but specifying your own URL) to this file:
setenv WWW_HOME http://www.mit.edu/people/me/home.html
This change will take effect next time you log in. You can also enter this line at your athena prompt to make the change for your current login session.