4. What "tools" do I need?

You don't need any fancy software to develop documents for the Insulin Pumpers web site - everything we need is available on line in the developer's area (thank goodness). Up until this point, you still do not need to know anything more "technical" about preparing information for Internet web pages than how to type an e-mail message.

"Useful tools" might include:

1. A text editor or word processing software (there is a text editor available on the developer's site, if needed). Your files need only be saved as .txt (non formatted text) files. We'll make them pretty later on in the process.
2. An FTP "client", or FTP file transfer capability, to move files to and from your computer. This is how the documents will get transferred to the Web site. (O.K. if you really want to know, FTP stands for "File Transfer Protocol"). The documents tend to get large as they are worked on and typically become too large to transfer as e-mail attachments.

   FTP lets you quickly transfer large files to another computer.

3. A Telnet "client". This capability will allow you to access the developer's page and use one of the tools to check your finished work and convert it to the proper format for presentation. Telnet is a network application that you can use to log in to one computer (or device) on the Internet from another. It is faster than using a "dialup" connection between the two computers.

If you don't have ftp or telnet on your computer, you may download some simple versions from the Insulin Pumpers ftp site. This will connect you to the "PUB" directory on the FTP server. Click on the Microsoft link to continue to the area where the FTP tools are located.

Clicking on the blue hypertext for each of the files will then initiate a download process for the file. When the download manager screen comes up, direct it to place these files in your Windows folder. You will have to do this separately for each file. Download the ftp, telnet, and telnet help files if you need them.

There are several of us who are comfortable with these tools and can walk "new comers" through the steps for their use. You'll certainly feel comfortable fairly soon with these basic utilities. The important point here is that you are not on your own. Others will gladly help if you ask!