If you are unable to find the answer here, for ThinkQuest New York City related information Ask the HelpDesk and for most other questions Google is a great search engine that can probably point you in the right direction to answer your question.
Q. What is ThinkQuest New York City?
A. ThinkQuest New York City is an educational program which challenges the students and teachers of New York City to build the best educational Web sites available on the Internet. A team of one to two coaches and two to six students collaborate to create a Web site. In the spring the web server accounts where you upload your project will be closed and evaluated. The winners will receive awards.
Q. Are there any costs associated with participation in ThinkQuest
New York City?
A. None at all! ThinkQuest New York City is free.
Q. Where do I register?
A. If you are an educator in New York City and have a group of two to six students interested in building an educational web site, you can register for an account and start building your web site today.
Q. What do Coaches need to do about Parental Permission for team members?
A. ThinkQuest New York City requires that coaches follow the parental permission policy of their school or organization. DO NOT SEND parental permission forms to ThinkQuest New York City. A coach should follow the stated policy of their school and when registering with ThinkQuest New York City simply acknowledge that they have the required permission for each team member by checking the appropriate check box on the registration form. If your school or organization does not have a policy we offer this description of the program to help coaches create a parental permission forms. The possible ways teams are formed and work make it impossible for us to have a single parental permission form for all cases.
Q. How can I create a Web site?
A. It's easier than you probably think. First, make the problem as simple as possible. A Web site is a collection of related Web pages. So your question is really "How do I make a Web page?". A web page is simply a text file written with some extra "tags" to tell the browser how to display the information. These "tags" are the basis of HTML, the language all web browsers speak. You can use a number of software programs to create HTML formatted text files. Most word processors will export or "save as" HTML. There are more complicated programs like DreamWeaver® or Adobe GoLive® or you can write the HTML by hand in Textpad. Microsoft Word ® will save as HTML too.
Once you have an HTML page you need to put it on a Web server so the rest of the world can look at it. For more information on "uploading" see out instructions. Remember that images you put link to your Web page need to be uploaded as well.
Also start simple, do not try and use every cool technology available in your first web page. Try to get a simple page with text to be viewable from the server. Once you accomplish this you can start to look for JavaScript to make your page more interactive, images to add color and fun to your page. Eventually you will have Flash ® animations running around your pages.
We recommend looking through our tutorials and resources to answer many questions. Otherwise Google is a great search engine for finding answers and instruction on Web development.
Q. Where can I get a clean copy of the ThinkQuest New York City Logo?
The ThinkQuest New York City logo can be found here with instructions on downloading and even the code to add it to your web site.
Q. Can I upload to my account after the judging is finished?
Yes, simply have your coach request the HelpDesk to re-open the account. Be sure to include the Team ID.
Q. Is there a penalty for uploading late?
There is a 5 point penalty for everyday the site is re-opened after the uploading deadline. In order to have your account reopened you must make a request through the helpdesk and include your team id.
Q. Where can I find the rules?
A. The rules are available here.
Q. How many students can be on a team?
A. A team may have up to six students.
Q. How many coaches can a team have?
A. A team may have up to two coaches.
Q. Who can participate?
A. A team must have a coach who is a teacher or educator in the New York City area as well as at least two and no more than six students.
Q. Can we make a Web site about anything?
A. Pretty much, the only constraint is that it has to be educational. Create your site to teach other students and adults about whatever interests you. If you cannot come up with anything take a look at what past participants have created in the ThinkQuest New York City Library for ideas and ask your coach or another teacher.
Q.If a team's website does not win an award this year can they revise and
expand their website and resubmit the following year?
Teams can resubmit there web sites in the following year, provided that
the team is generally in tact. If a member of the team has left the team,
the web site "Attribution" section must include the contributions of that team
member as if they were any other author of material.
Q. When do we get web server accounts?
A. First your team must register. Web server accounts are automatically
created within 24 hours. Once the account is created your team will
receive an e-mail confirmation with login and uploading instructions.
Q. How do I upload?
A. We recommend using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) enabled clients to transfer your Web site to the ThinkQuest New York city servers. You can learn much more in the Uploading page in the Tutorial Section.
Q. Why do I get a list of files when I try to look at my website with a browser?
A. The web server will look for a file named "index.html" or "index.htm" when no filename is given. So when you go to "http://www.tqnyc.org/NYC00123/" there is no filename after the last forward slash ("/"), the web server will look for the default page, "index.html". The first page, your "Home Page" should be named "index.html". If you have built your site and have many links to the "Home Page" but with a name other than "index.html" you can copy your "Home Page" file and rename it "index.html". This is a quick fix and we recommend fixing the links but in a pinch it will work.
Q. Why do some or all of my images appear broken?
A. Most likely the HTML page has the wrong filename or is looking the wrong place for the file. This happens when you keep you images in a directory or folder other than where the HTML page lives and then you do not upload the directories correctly. A good practise is to keep the images for a web page in the same directory, or folder, where the HTML page lives.
Q. What does a good filename look like?
A. The best practise is to only use letters, numbers and underscores ("_") only. Do not allow "whitespaces" in filenames. The ThinkQuest New york City servers run Linux, a Unix variant, and deals with "whitespaces" differently than Windows operating systems. We suggest you replace spaces with underscores so you do not encounter problems after uploading. For example, if you have a file names "my homepage.html" rename the file "my_homepage.html". This will allow you to easily read the filename while satisfying all operating systems requirements for a functional website.
Q. What do I do when I have searched the Web and cannot find an answer?
A. Submit your question to the ThinkQuest New York City HelpDesk and our team of Web monkeys will do everything within their great power to get you a solution. Always include your Team ID and all the relevant information related to your issue to help us answer as quickly as possible.
Q. Can I use any picture or animation I find on the Internet in my Web site?
A. No, if you do not create the image, animation, text or any other work you must have permission and cite the original author or creator. To use someone else's work is plagiarism and against the rules and illegal. Your team can be disqualified if you do not get written permission and cite your sources. The American Psychological Association Style Guide is an excellent resource to learn how to cite sources correctly. More information can be found in the Duke University Library Web site and the OhioLINK Library.
Q. Can I use ASP scripts in my Web site?
A. No, ASP is a proprietary format only available from Microsoft in their server product. The TQNYC server is GNU/Linux based and is not able to provide these features in a secure environment.
Q. Why can I not log in?
A. There are many possible resolutions to this question.
#1 Have you registered for a ThinkQuest New York City team and recieved and email with a Team ID and password? If not you should do that here.
#2 Are you entering the Team ID and password exactly as they appear in the email. They are both case sensitive, which means you must enter capital letters as capital letters and lower case letters as lower case letters.
#3 If you are trying to log into the ThinkQuest New York City web site you must have "cookies" enabled in your browser. These are usually on by default.
#4 If you are doing everything correctly (see 1 thru 3) and still cannot get in there may be a problem between your computer and the ThinkQuest New York City server like a proxy server and/or firewall that is not allowing cookies through. You can double check if this is the case by trying to log in from a computer outside your network. You will have to contact the person who is incharge of your network if this is the case.
#5 When all else fails contact the TQNYC HelpDesk and include as much information about your computer, browser and Internet connection as possible and we will try to help you through it.
Q. What is PHP?
This is the simple answer from the PHP Manual, "PHP (recursive acronym for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor") is a widely-used Open Source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.".
For a better answer check out the rest of their Introduction to PHP.
Q. What is MySQL?
MySQL is a database management system.
A database is a structured collection of data. It may be anything from a simple shopping list to a picture gallery or the vast amounts of information in a corporate network. To add, access, and process data stored in a computer database, you need a database management system such as MySQL Server. Since computers are very good at handling large amounts of data, database management systems play a central role in computing, as stand-alone utilities or as parts of other applications.
MySQL is a relational database management system.
A relational database stores data in separate tables rather than putting all the data in one big storeroom. This adds speed and flexibility. The SQL part of "MySQL" stands for "Structured Query Language". SQL is the most common standardised language used to access databases and is defined by the ANSI/ISO SQL Standard.(The SQL standard has been evolving since 1986 and several versions exist.
Q. Where can I get help with PHP or MySQL?
A. The best place to start with either of these is with the documentation the project maintainers have posted on their web sites. For PHP go to http://www.php.net/manual/en/, the PHP Manual. It is available in a variety of formats and languages on the site.
For MySQL, the MySQL Manual is available here http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/index.html. These are both a little technical. There are numerous other articles and tutorials on the web for both of these. www.google.com is a good place to search for such things.
You should also check out our Web Resources for valuable links to helpful web sites related to these. ThinkQuest New York City also has it's our simple PHP tutorial.
Q. How much space do I get for my team's project?
A. Each team can use up to 50MB of space on the ThinkQuest New York City server. If your team has a compelling reason to need more space, a written request must be submitted to the helpdesk and approved. All requests must include what the space will be used for as well as how much space is being requested.
Q. How do I transfer a MySQL database from one machine to the TQNYC server?
A. This answer assumes you have requested a MySQL account via the dev tools page.
Run the following command from the "command line" on your local machine and you will get a SQL script (file) that can recreate your database structure and load the data with. To do this run this command from a command prompt (DOS window) on your local machine where you have mysql running:
"mysqldump -u {username} -p {database name} > {filename}.sql"
You obviously have to change anything in brackets {} to the actual values for this to work. This should prompt you for your password and then generate a file, .sql file.
Upload this file to your team account on the TQNYC server via FTP or using the filemanager.
Log into the TQNYC server via telnet. Depending on your operating system how this is done varies. In Windows you open a DOS window and type:
"telnet tqnyc.org"
When prompted enter your team id and password. This should get you to a "command prompt". From here you are in the "root" of your account.
So once you are logged in and have uploaded the .sql file you can run this command and recreate the tables and load the data:
"mysql -p {databasename (teamID)} < {uploaded script}.sql"
Since you are logged in as the mysql user you do not need the "-u" option and the database name is your Team ID as well.
This should recreate your database and load the data. If you open the .sql script in a text editor you will see it is a bunch of sql statements.
If you are using Mac OS9 you may need to download a telnet client to connect.
You may also run into trouble if you are connecting from somewhere like a school with a strict firewall that blocks the telnet port so it may not work from everywhere.
Q. What should I know if I am using FrontPage to create my web pages?
A. There are a few issues to consider while using FrontPage. Microsoft developed this software to be an all-in-one web-publishing tool. There are a lot of features within FrontPage that will not function on the ThinkQuest server such as hit counters, search forms, confirmation fields, ActiveX controls and anything under the Insert menu>Component submenu.
An easy way to turn off features you should not use can be turned off by going to the toolbar and selecting "Tools" and then "Page Options". This should open a menu that has a tab labeled "Compatibility". Click that table and select "Both Internet Explorer and Navigator". Under the "Servers" drop down select "Apache" and uncheck the checkbox labeled "Enable with Micorosft FrontPage Server Extensions". By selecting these options FrontPage will generate web pages that will conform to the TQNYC server and most browsers that will be viewing your site.
If you use the "Publish" function to upload your site to the server the address to use is "ftp://www.tqnyc.org" (notice the prefix "ftp://"). Then you will enter your Team ID and password when prompted. The last step will offer you a link to view the page. DO NO CLICK THIS LINK. To view your site on the server, open a browser and enter "http://www.tqnyc.org/{your team ID}", replacing {your team ID} with your team ID like NYC051234.
