W3Pal Quick Tutorial

Creating a Graph

The first step in displaying a web site is to generate the site's webgraph. Webgraph generation is carried out by the W3Pal web robot, webbot.

1. Start w3pal

   From a console running on X type w3pal.

   
   

2. Start the webbot application

   From the w3pal application, go to File|New|Webbot (or hit CTRL-W)

   
   Starting Webbot from w3pal

3. Set webbot file name

   In the webbot application window, select File|Set File Name. In the dialog box which appears, input the path to the executable webbot program. Typically this will be /usr/local/bin/webbot.

   
   

4. Set working directory

   In the webbot application window, select File|Set File Directory. In the dialog box which appears, input the path to the directory where you wish to save the output file to. This defaults to your current directory.

   
   

5. Tell webbot where to start

   Enter the information on what www location you wish to build a graph for. You will need to enter the starting URL, the Depth of your search, the Number of Documents you wish to look at and the Prefix for files you will consider in indexing. Typcially the Prefix will be the same as the starting URL

   
   URL, Depth, Num Doc and Prefix must be entered

6. Decide where the output will go

   From the Webbot Options on the left of the webbot application window, select Log Files. You must enter a name for the output file from the indexing in the Graph input box. In the interest of simplicity, the rest of the boxes may be left blank.

   
   Choosing an output file

7. Run Webbot

   With the previous information entered, you may hit the Run Webbot button to beging the indexing. You will see information scroll in the output window on the bottom of the webbot application window. When webbot is done, your graph file will be in the file directory you set (if you set it) or the current directory otherwise.

   
   

You may also wish to read the brief webbot application overview [W3Pal Webbot]