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How to publish your WML pages and WAP site?

© Wai Seto

After a couple of articles of how to write WML pages, you probably say 'Now what?' Yes, you have a few WML pages on your harddrive. How do you make them available to the world? How do you test them on an emulator, or an actual device for that matter? This article has your answers. In this article, we will go through some essential steps for making a WAP/WML site available to the world.

Step 1. Have your WML pages ready, of course!
Contents!!! This is what we need. If you have do not have any WML pages ready, you can stop here! If you do, you are in good shape. The last couple of articles in this topic should help you get started with creating WML page. It's not useful, but you can certain put a Hello World WML page up on a server.

Assuming that you have gone through the articles, you should now be an expert in WML. :P Just a quick tip on writing your WML pages. Think Simple!

As we all know the screen display on a phone or pager is much different from a PC. The rules that you have applied to PC HTML programming might not be good for WML. Think simple. Always start with what is the most important thing you want users to read. Deliever your information with a simple manner.

Step 2. Find a web server to host your WML pages
Remember between WAP gateway and the content server is a HTTP link. Therefore any standard web server can serve your WML pages. One catch! The WML, WMLScript, WBMP, all have a special content-type. You need to make sure the web server will add the correct content-types in HTTP headers. If you have no idea what the last sentence is, don't worry. All you have to do is to add a few MIME type into the web server. Specific content types mapping is documented in http://www.suite101.com/topic_page.cfm/5... . Okay, this is what I did. I asked my virtual web hosting server to add the MIME types I need to the web server. They are nice enough to do so. Now I upload all my WML pages onto the web server, and millions of WAP phone users can read my pages on their phones!!

Step 3. Test your pages with emulators or devices
Before you put your WAP site into search engines, you should be the first one to visit your site. Doing this can give you a feel of how users will read your WML pages. The best way to do this is to actually have a WAP enabled device. Well, I understand WAP enabled devices are still hard to come by. Don't be discouraged if you don't have one. There are many emulators that allow you to read your pages as if you are reading them from an actual device.

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