Your next step is to tell the AvantGo sync server about your new channel.

Point your browser to https://my.avantgo.com/home/ and log in to your account. Click on the My Account tab. This takes you to an area where you can manage your current channels and add new ones.

Remember, an AvantGo channel is simply a bunch of web pages. So any group of web pages can theoretically be read in as an AvantGo channel, even if it is not an "official" AvantGo channel. This is exactly what you are going to do with your test channel. Click on the Create Custom Channel link in the middle of the page.

Note: The custom channel function is intended for personal, non-commercial use. If you are creating a custom channel for any other purpose, you must review our Custom Channel policy at:

     http://avantgo.custhelp.com/

(Scroll to bottom of page.)

Topics in this section:

The Title setting

It is a simple process, but we will go through it step by step. The first field, Title, asks for the name of your channel. Enter the name of your channel, or put in "Hello World" if you are using our example for your first channel.

Note: The Title you specify cannot match the title of any existing channel.

Tip: Keep your channel title short, simple, and descriptive. It should convey the main idea of what your channel is about to potential subscribers.

The Location setting

In the Location field, enter the URL of the home page of your channel website. If you are using our example for your first channel, you would enter http://www.hwgazette.com/avantgo/index.html here.

The Maximum Channel Size setting

The next field asks what the Maximum Channel Size should be. This means that, as the AvantGo sync server is collecting pages for your channel, it will stop if it reaches this size limit. If your channel's pages total up more than the size you specify here, some pages will not be downloaded when users sync. 100KB should be a large enough size limit for getting started with your first channel. For more information on how the channel size limit is calculated and the trade-offs you face when you set this limit, see Size limit issues and Your channel's Maximum Channel Size limit. For information on troubleshooting "This page is not available on the device" messages, which are common when your channel exceeds its maximum size limit, see Channel troubleshooting and debugging tips.

Note: The size of the files on the mobile device will not be the same as their size on the desktop. AvantGo compresses the HTML. AvantGo does not compress the images, but converts images to the format supported by the device type that is syncing. Images will typically be largest when downloaded to high resolution Palm or Pocket PC devices and smallest when downloaded to black and white Palm OS devices. Therefore you need to test your channel on different devices to ensure that it is staying within your Maximum Channel Size setting.

The Link Depth setting

Link Depth asks how deep the AvantGo sync server should traverse your site when looking for web pages. For example, if a link depth is set to 1, it will follow all pages that are linked to from the initial location. But it will not follow any links included in those pages unless the link depth is set to 2, and so on. The link depth concept is illustrated in Figure 3-2.

Set the Link Depth to the level that you want downloaded in a sync.

Caution: Any pages in your site that are beyond the link level you set will not be downloaded.

Tip: It will simplify your work and ensure that you are only dealing with one problem at a time if you leave Link Depth set at the default value of 0 until you have successfully tested the download of your home page in a sync.

The Include Images setting

Include Images asks if you want the AvantGo sync server to grab images. Often, you will not want to do this as many web pages are very graphics-intensive and are not intended for a screen of 150x150.

If you are creating your first channel using our Hello World Gazette, even though you do not have any graphics yet, you are creating this channel with the AvantGo channel limitations in mind, and will be making graphics that are nice and small. So click on the Yes radio button.

For information on creating images for your channel site, see Designing graphics for channel pages.

The Follow Off-Site Links setting

Follow Off-Site Links asks if you want the AvantGo sync server to follow links it encounters that are within the link depth that you set, but which are not located within your website. In our Hello World Gazette example, this would be any pages outside of www.hwgazette.com.

You generally do not want this to happen, because most off-site links are not under your control and probably do not contain data optimized for being viewed on a mobile device. So leave No checked, unless you are sure the off-site links involved will work well on a mobile device.

The Refresh setting

The last section on the Create Channel form asks how often you want to refresh this channel. Once your channel is up and running, the answer depends on how often pages in your channel site change. You want to be sure that the AvantGo sync server is downloading the latest pages. Pages that are not changing can be cached — for details, see CHAPTER 5. Caching to improve channel performance — so you just need to be sure that the AvantGo sync server refreshes your channel often enough to catch the latest changes fairly soon after they are available.

Tip: While you are testing your channel, most of the time you will be updating pages constantly and then syncing to see how the pages look. To ensure that you always get the latest test pages when you sync, select On Every Sync.

Take a moment to review your channel properties. If you are creating our example Hello World Gazette channel, the form should now look something like Figure 3-3:

Settings that users can change

Users who subscribe to your channel will be able to change the Maximum Channel Size, Include Images, and Refresh settings. If you want to lock your Maximum Channel Size and/or Include Images settings so that users can not change them, contact AvantGo when you are ready to roll out your channel.

Saving channel settings

Make sure all the settings are what you want them to be, then click the Save Channel button. You will return to a listing of your AvantGo channels page. If everything is working properly, the Hello World channel will be listed on your AvantGo channels page.