1.4. Maintaining Web Sites

After you create a Web site, you likely want to manage it properly so that you don't lose the work you've completed and don't have to re-create anything. However, Web site maintenance isn't just about backing up and publishing content. You also have to decide which content to publish, which Web pages to keep, and which version of files to delete.

SharePoint Designer offers a number of options for Web site maintenance. Depending on the type of Web site that you're working on, you have a set of tools available in SharePoint Designer to perform housekeeping and Web site management.

1.4.1. Understanding basic site management for non-SharePoint sites

The first operation that you need to perform when your Web site is ready is to publish it to a remote Web server by using an Internet address (URL) that your hosting provider or Web site administrator grants for your Web site. Publishing is the process of making the Web site content available for viewing by others. SharePoint Designer allows you to publish content from one Web server to another, from a disk-based location on the local computer to a Web server, or from a Web server-based location to a folder on your local computer (called reverse publishing).

1.4.1.1. Publishing

SharePoint Designer offers an easy-to-use, intuitive mechanism for publishing content from one location to another. You can access the SharePoint Designer publishing interface by choosing File Publish Site. The Remote Web Site Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 1.5, opens in the foreground, and the Remote Publishing pane opens in the background of the SharePoint Designer environment.

The Web site that you have open in SharePoint Designer becomes the local Web site for publishing and is displayed in the Local Web Site section of the Remote Publishing pane. You then use the Remote Web Site Properties dialog box to specify the type of remote Web server, the location of the remote Web site, and the settings for the publishing operation.

After the remote Web site is set up, you can either publish from local to remote, publish from remote to local (reverse publishing), or synchronize the content of the two Web sites.

Figure 1.5. The Remote Web Site Properties dialog box

1.4.1.2. Import and export content

SharePoint Designer provides two mechanisms for importing and exporting content, which are available by choosing File Import or File Export:

• Import Site Wizard: Use this wizard to import content from a variety of locations. Choosing to use FPSE, WebDAV, or FTP as an import location in this wizard links you back to the Remote Publishing pane for SharePoint Designer. However, the HTTP option allows you to download Web pages and content from any HTTP location on the Internet.

• Personal Web Packages: This allows you to package a Web site into a compressed file (.fwp) that can then be exported into another site. While exporting and importing contents of a Web site, SharePoint Designer allows you to choose the content you want to compress in the package for exporting and then choose content you want to import.

1.4.1.3. Versioning

Depending on the nature of a Web site, the SharePoint Designer interface allows a designer to check-out a document so that it becomes locked — preventing others from working on the Web site — modify and update the document, and save and then check-in the document so that the updated document is available for other users.

Versioning and document check-in and check-out features in SharePoint Designer mostly rely on the Web server configuration and type. Although basic check-in and check-out are available for disk-based (using hidden metadata), FTP, and WebDAV sites, the advanced versioning features are provided by Web sites that use FPSE or SharePoint. For example, you can enable basic document check-in and check-out (if you have hidden metadata allowed) by clicking the Use document check-in and check-out check box in the General tab of the Site Settings dialog box.

1.4.1.4. Reporting

You use the Reports pane in SharePoint Designer to access many of the reports that it generates for Web sites. Choose Site Reports to open the Reports pane. Besides site and usage reporting, SharePoint Designer also offers these reporting features:

• CSS reports: You can have SharePoint Designer generate reports that show details about unused styles, undefined classes, mismatched cases, and CSS usage while implementing CSS. These reports help in consolidating the style sheets being used inside the Web site more efficiently.

• Accessibility reports: Using the Accessibility Checker in SharePoint Designer, you can find out if your Web pages are compatible with the accessibility Web standards. You can use the report generated to correct issues and improve accessibility.

• Compatibility reports: You can use these reports to find out if your Web pages are compatible with the Web browser and CSS schema you're targeting your Web site for.

1.4.2. Authoring SharePoint sites

With SharePoint sites, although most site management operations are performed using the SharePoint administration Web sites and tools, limited backup and restore and import and export capabilities are offered by SharePoint Designer.

In the user interface, SharePoint Designer treats SharePoint sites almost like any other Web site. So, you can perform most authoring and site management operations on SharePoint sites in manners similar to non-SharePoint sites. However, SharePoint Designer provides a lot of new features in collaboration with SharePoint that make the authoring and management experience a lot more different and enriching.

Here's a brief introduction to some SharePoint-specific features of SharePoint Designer:

• SharePoint content: SharePoint Designer allows the creation of almost all SharePoint content, including sites and subsites, page layouts and master pages, lists and document libraries, and surveys. It also offers the Document Library View Page Wizard and List View Page Wizard that assist in creating view pages for SharePoint document libraries and lists.

• Workflows: SharePoint Designer has an advanced Workflow Designer that can be used to create, compile, and deploy declarative workflows for SharePoint sites.

• Data forms: With SharePoint sites, SharePoint Designer enables a complete menu called Data View that offers capabilities to work with data sources provide by SharePoint. It offers the Data Form Web Part that can be used to create views and forms for SharePoint data sources.

• Web parts and SharePoint controls: SharePoint Designer allows for inserting and modifying properties of SharePoint Web parts and Web part zones. Also, it exposes a number of SharePoint controls as well as page and content fields that can be used on SharePoint Web pages.

• Contributor settings: These settings allow SharePoint administrators to enable or disable certain features and menu options in SharePoint Designer based on the permissions that a user has on a SharePoint Web site.

• Back up and restore Web sites: The publishing feature of SharePoint Designer isn't useable with SharePoint sites. Instead, you can use SharePoint Designer to package, back up, and restore SharePoint Web sites.