Publishing a Web Site

If you worked with FrontPage offline to develop your Web site, you must publish the Web files to a Web server to make them available to your users. FrontPage provides a set of complete tools for publishing your Web site, including support for Web servers that do not have FrontPage Server Extensions installed.

When FrontPage publishes your Web site, it copies your Web files to the Web server and corrects hyperlinks and document references for the new location.

Tip from

If you are publishing a personal Web site and need an inexpensive Web-hosting service, these two services will host your Web site free: see Yahoo! GeoCities at http://www.geocities.com and Lycos Tripod at http://www.tripod.com.


Note

If you set up an intranet Web server to be used for authoring your Web site and intend to publish that site to an Internet Web server at a later time, be sure to configure FrontPage to match the capabilities of the Internet server. For example, if your intranet server uses Windows NT and IIS, and the Internet server uses Linux and Apache, disable the features that cannot be used with Apache. To do so, choose Tools, Page Options, and make your choices on the Compatibility tab.


Before you publish your Web site, you should test it thoroughly. Make a complete pass through your Web site content before you publish it to a Web server. Typically, this entails navigating through your pages, confirming each link, and verifying the look and feel of your pages. If you find any discrepancies, it's better to fix them now than to publish the Web and have your users find the errors online.

Choosing which Files to Publish

Normally, you can let FrontPage decide which files need to be published. FrontPage compares the file dates with those on your Web server and sends only the files that have changed. By default, FrontPage attempts to publish all new or modified files in your Web site. If you do not want certain files or folders to be published, you can choose which files to exclude from publishing. For example, you might have unfinished content in some pages, but you want to publish the others anyway; or, you might want to publish a recently completed portion of the Web site.

To choose the files to exclude from publishing, enter Reports view and bring up the Reporting toolbar. Choose Reports, Workflow, Publish Status. For each file that you want to exclude from publishing, right-click in the Publish column and select Don't Publish.

Publishing to a Server with FrontPage Server Extensions

If your Web server supports FrontPage Server Extensions (or Office Server Extensions, or SharePoint Server Extensions), you should encounter little difficulty when publishing your Web site. FPSE assists FrontPage with file and link management, and can duplicate many of the actions that you took while offline, such as deleting, renaming, or moving files. For example, if you delete a page in your Web site while authoring offline and then you publish the Web site, FPSE will delete the page on the Web server, too.

To start the process of publishing your Web site, choose File, Publish Web.

Note

When using FrontPage Server Extensions, resist the urge to update files outside FrontPage, such as through an FTP program. Doing so can confuse FrontPage and limit its capability to track your links, update your table of contents, and maintain your search engine index. If you must do so—perhaps in an urgent situation in which you command your Web-hosting service to update a critical page—be sure to resynchronize the Web site when you return to FrontPage by choosing Tools, Recalculate Hyperlinks.


If you find that some links become broken after you've published your Web, see "Broken Links After Publishing" in the "Troubleshooting" section at the end of this chapter.

Publishing to a Server with FTP

If your Web server does not use FPSE, you can publish your Web site using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). FTP provides a simple way for you to transfer the updated files from your local machine to the Web server.

To publish via FTP, you must first create an FTP Location shortcut. The FTP Location shortcut can remember your username and password for you. When you publish your Web site again in the future, FrontPage can supply your login information automatically. To create the FTP Location shortcut, choose File, Publish Web. and click Browse. In the Look In options list at the top of the Open Web dialog box, choose the FTP Locations folder. Double-click the Add/Modify FTP Locations icon. The Add/Modify FTP Locations dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 37.11.

Figure 37.11. Enter the location and login credentials for your FTP site.`


In the Name of FTP Site text box, enter the server name , such as ftp.threedogdelight.com. If the server requires a specific username and password, choose the User option button and enter the username in the associated text box. Type the password into the Password text box, and click Add. You should see your new location in the FTP Sites list box. Click OK.

Publishing to a Local Drive or Network Share

FrontPage enables you to publish your Web content to a local drive or a network drive (sometimes called a network share). This is a useful way to create a backup of your Web content. Instead of copying the files manually, publish the files to the backup location so that you also copy any of the important supporting files that FrontPage uses to maintain your Web site, including Shared Borders, Java applets, themes, and security information.

To enter the destination location of your Web site, choose File, Publish Web. The New Publish Location dialog box appears, and you can navigate to the appropriate location.

Adjusting Publishing Options

In the Publish Web dialog box, click Options to display a set of publishing options (see Figure 37.12).

Figure 37.12. Control how your Web site is published.


If you want all your Web files to be published, click the Publish All Pages, overwriting pages already on destination option button. Doing so overwrites any files currently hosted at your Web site. Never fear—any files that you might have identified to exclude from publishing will not be published.

To save time when you publish your Web site, choose the Publish Changed Pages Only option button. FrontPage compares the dates and times of the source and destination files, and updates only the changed files.

Tip from

If you work with a group of authors on a fairly busy site, you should consider setting up a staging server, where you can stage new content or updates to existing content before publishing it to the live Web server. Using a staging server also enables the new content to be tested thoroughly and reviewed by upper management before publishing it to the world at large.


Transferring Web Files

After you have selected your publishing options, click Publish to start the process of copying your content to the Web server. FrontPage connects to the server and updates your files. If the server requires a username and password to connect, you might see a Name and Password Required dialog box. Enter the proper credentials and click OK.

After FrontPage connects, a dialog box appears to display the progress of the publishing process. Watch, and you can see how FrontPage updates your Web server. In this dialog box, click the blue underlined text link to open a browser to your Web site. You can immediately test your Web site and verify that the changes that you made have been properly published.

If you publish your Web site and find that some files did not update, see "Some Files Not Updated" in the "Troubleshooting" section next.

..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset
18.218.218.230