MS FrontPage —

Publishing Your Site

You've laid the groundwork. You set up a remote destination and configured your preferences. Now it's time to pull the trigger.

To publish:

  1. Open the Web site you want to publish in FrontPage.

  2. Initiate the publish operation.

    Select File » Publish Site, or click the Web site tab and select Remote Web site view at the bottom of the screen. If you've configured your remote site and are connected to the Internet, you should see two panes: your local site (the one you opened in FrontPage and intend to move to the Web server) appears on the left, and your remote (or destination) site appears on the right (see Figure 13-4).

    Figure 13-4. Remote Web Site view shows your local site on the left and the remote site on the right. Updated files that FrontPage intends to publish have an arrow next to them, indicating the direction the program will send them. Conflicts (files that have changed in both locations) have a question mark next to themlike the Index1.htm file pictured here. A red circle with an X in it indicates a file that you've held back from publishinglike hats.htm in the left pane.

    If you haven't configured your publish settings yet, the Remote Web Site Properties dialog box opens instead. The previous section explains how to configure these options.

  3. Set the direction in which you want to send your files.

    On the lower right of the screen, FrontPage gives you three choices. Most likely, you'll be publishing "Local to remote" (from the development site you have open in FrontPage up to your live production Web site). But FrontPage does let you publish in the other direction, "Remote to local." Generally, you want to stay away from the latter. (A live Web site should not be used as a backup; publish to another disk location instead.) However, you may need to occasionally go the "Remote to local" route. For instance, if someone edited a file or two up on the live server, you may need to copy the new files down to your development site.

    If you've told FrontPage to publish only changed files, you'll have a third choice: Synchronize. This feature publishes in both directions at once, insuring that both the local and remote site contain the same copies of each file. The most recent copy of each file always wins out.

  4. Click Publish Web Site.

    As FrontPage publishes your site, the program keeps you apprised of its progress in the lower left of the screen. If it encounters a problemsay, a page that won't work on the destination server because the server lacks FPSE FrontPage lets you know. You'll need to address these problems yourself later on.

    You may see other prompts asking you whether you want to overwrite files that conflict with each other. These are files that have changed in both locations since you last published. (Perhaps a colleague edited a file up on the live server and you didn't know about it.) In Remote Web site view, these files appear with question marks next to them. If you're unsure what the conflict is, click Ignore and Continue. Later, you can compare conflicting files manually, make the proper edits in your local site, and then publish those select files. If you're sure the copy you're publishing is the one you need, click Overwrite Destination Files.

  5. Test your site.

    The publishing process and new environment can affect your pages. Test your site thoroughly on the live Web server to make sure pages look and act the way you expect.

Before you publish, always make sure your settings are correctthat is, you're publishing in the direction you want, replacing the files you want, and have selected the criteria that you want.

Excluding Files from Publishing

There may be some files that you don't want to publish along with the rest of your site. For instance, you probably don't want to publish pages that are still under construction.

FrontPage makes it easy to hold back specific files. Just select them in the Local Web site page, right-click, and select Don't Publish. A red circle with an x in it appears to the left of the file, letting you know that FrontPage will hold it back the next time you publish. When you're ready to publish it, right-click it and select Don't Publish again. Doing so removes the checkmark and signals to FrontPage that you're ready to release this page in the wild. If you want to see a list of excluded files, click the View drop-down menu in the upper-left corner and select "Files not to Publish" (see Figure 13-5).

Figure 13-5. If you want to see what files are in conflict, or held back from publishing, you can change your view. To do so, click the View drop-down menu on the upper-left corner of Web Site tab.

Publishing Selected Files

Say you made changes to just one page that you want to send up to the live server. There's no need to wait while FrontPage compares your site or uploads unchanged files. Just publish the file in question.

To do so, open your site in Remote Web site view (Fine Tuning Hyperlink Properties). Within the Local Web site pane, select the file(s) you want to publish. Right-click and select Publish Selected Files or click the Publish arrow button in the center of your screen, between the local and remote panes.

Open Your Remote Web Site in FrontPage

It's bad practice to edit your site on the live Web server, since doing so earns you a free ticket to Version Control Hell. But there may be times when you want to open your remote site in FrontPage (to run a usage report, for example). FrontPage gives you this option in the form of a link on the lower left of Remote Web site view. Click the "Open your Remote Web site in FrontPage" link and the remote site opens in a new instance of FrontPage. Unfortunately, this option isn't available for sites published via FTP or WebDAV.

The "View Your Remote Web site" option just above the "Open your Remote Web site in FrontPage" link opens the site in Windows Explorer.