hotpotatoes.net - a Hosting Service

hotpotatoes.net was designed to work in conjunction with TexToys and Hot Potatoes, to simplify the job of publishing material on a webserver. When you create exercises using the Hot Potatoes or TexToys programs, you can now upload them directly to the web server at hotpotatoes.net, with just a couple of mouse-clicks.

Once the document is uploaded, you can send the address, or "URL", of the page, to anyone, and they can go to that address and see the page.

If you create student accounts, your students can log in and complete the exercise inside hotpotatoes.net. In this context, the results of the exercises are stored on hotpotatoes.net, and you can see and download these results.

As well as Hot Potatoes and TexToys exercises, you can also upload other types of document, including HTML, PDF and MSWord documents, and a wide range of image, sound and multimedia files. Your students can use these as background learning before attempting the exercises.

When you create materials for online learning, you have to make it possible for your student to access them. If you have created your materials in web page format using Hot Potatoes or TexToys, one way to make them available is to place them on a Web Server computer. Many colleges and schools operate their own web servers on their local networks, but for longer-distance learning, an internet web server is the best solution.

However, using an internet Web Server is not always a simple matter. You have to use special software for transferring files, and you may be restricted by firewalls or other security mechanisms. If you include linked images, sounds or other "media", these must be uploaded separately, to the correct locations, otherwise they won't display properly on the page.

hotpotatoes.net simplifies this process, uploading linked files automatically. It also provides a management screen, the Administration Area, which lets you see which Pages and linked files you have uploaded, and to group the Pages into Classes.