Uploading chessboard to website

Question

I am a beginner programmer with some experience in HTML, PHP, and Java. I would like to upload a chessboard onto my website, and I have used the following links to help me:

http://chess.geniusprophecy.com/chess-viewer.html

http://chesstuff.blogspot.com/2008/11/chess-viewer-deluxe.html

However, I am getting stuck in placing the code (in steps 2. and 3. of the second link) in my source code. For example, what lines should I change and manipulate in

<APPLET archive="Viewer-Deluxe.jar" code="ChessBoard.class"
codebase="/bin" width="631" height="560" mayscript="true">
<PARAM name=PgnGameFile value="/games/Samples.Pgn">
<PARAM name=LightSquares value=F3DCC2>
<PARAM name=DarkSquares value=DDA37B>
<PARAM name=Background value=CCCCCC>
<PARAM name=ImagesFolder value=images>
<PARAM name=PuzzleMode value="off">
Your browser is completely ignoring the &lt;APPLET&gt; tag!
</APPLET>

in order for my code to work? I've tried modifying the value="" line many many times and I'm frustrated because nothing seems to be working. I've saved my files in the right directory, subdirectory, etc. but I keep getting the error

java.io.FileNotFoundException

Answer 1

Your issue is likely because you're running Windows instead of *nix.

<PARAM name=PgnGameFile value="/games/Samples.Pgn">

/games/Samples.Pgn is a unixy way to specify a path. If you're on Windows, try the similar:

c:\games\Samples.pgn

Be sure you get the spelling and capitalization exactly right.

Edit #1

According to the feedback below, there's now a malformed URL exception. So the value needs to be a URL, not a file name. That's a little different - the unix-like path is correct.

First, try games/Samples.pgn

Note there is no leading /.

Make sure the capitalization is exactly right. This assumes that there's a folder under your web root called games and that your web server has access to it. The original URL, /games/Samples.Pgn, would likely require a folder called games to be hanging off the root of the hard drive and most web servers don't have access to that folder.

Answer 2

I'm not too familiar with the Java applets that you're looking at, but I recommend that you use JavaScript for this sort of job. This GitHub repository can be used to display and play through your own games (it supports PGN and FEN).

There are many other libraries out there - it's easy for you to change the design of the board and pieces to suit your site's style. You also might want to ask this question on StackOverflow as you might find some more technical advice there.