I'm an idiot and need help with web page hosting

[DeeBye]

Grrr...  Yes, I got those two programs and I did all those things, but it will NOT let me print my file to CutePDF... it's not even listed!!!  Everything is installed correctly.  When I try printing my document to *.* ALL FILES so I can change it into .pdf, it crashes Word!  I don't get this program.
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I used Open Office to convert your Freezadin Guide to this PDF file. It literally took me 10 seconds to do. Open your guide >"file" > "export as PDF". It was that simple.

I'd honestly not bother with a PDF though. There's no real benefit to that other than to make it viewable to people without a word reader. If you want to make it downloadable, just leave it as a DOC or ZIP (your choice). When you want to link to them from other forums and whatnot, use these URLs:
http://members.cox.net/meat/GUIDE-Freeze%20a%20din.doc
http://members.cox.net/meat/GUIDE-Freeze%20a%20din.zip

There you go, they are already downloadable. Good job.

If you want to make them viewable online, you'll absolutely need to convert them to HTML. I'd REALLY suggest following some HTML tutorials and starting it from scratch if you want to learn to get comfortable with HTML. Or, you can take the easy way out and have Word convert it to HTML.

[ldw]

My HTML skills are a few years rusty, but I do beleive it is possible to create a link that opens the 'save' command in broswers.  Maybe I'm making that up though.

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It all depends on how the server deals with the apparent extension of the file, and if the server doesn't supply much of the how-to then the browser will try to deduce what to do with the file. Save dialogue is initiated for extensions for which it makes sense to save the file (the browser has a set of defaults for these too).

You are correct you can make up a script that just overrides the file type decision making by setting: 'Content-type' header.
Following which a stream of data forming the file can be just shoved into the HTTP open stream. The browser will deal with it.
More info here.

MEAT's links work because the server correctly set HTTP header: "Content-Type" for the files based on either the extension of the magic of the file.

$ wget --spider --server-response http://members.cox.net/meat/GUIDE-Freeze%20a%20din.doc
- http://members.cox.net/meat/GUIDE-Freeze%20a%20din.doc
=> `GUIDE-Freeze%20a%20din.doc'
Resolving members.cox.net... done.
Connecting to members.cox.net[68.1.17.8]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
1 HTTP/1.1 200 OK
2 Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2004 15:22:55 GMT
3 Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) FrontPage/4.0.4.3
4 Last-Modified: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 08:09:04 GMT
5 ETag: "1aac6c-5d202-41610520"
6 Accept-Ranges: bytes
7 Content-Length: 381442
8 Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
9 Connection: Keep-Alive
10 Content-Type: application/msword
200 OK

Similarly for the .zip file it returned Content-Type: application/zip

The browser then has it easy to do the appropriate action for each.

[Munkay]

It all depends on how the server deals with the apparent extension of the file, and if the server doesn't supply much of the how-to then the browser will try to deduce what to do with the file. Save dialogue is initiated for extensions for which it makes sense to save the file (the browser has a set of defaults for these too). 

You are correct you can make up a script that just overrides the file type decision making by setting: 'Content-type' header.
Following which a stream of data forming the file can be just shoved into the HTTP open stream. The browser will deal with it.
More info here.
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Thanks for confirming, and the extra information.

Cheers,

Munk