About publishing files and folders

Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003

ShowUsing Remote Web Site view to publish

Remote Web Site view lets you publish in both directions, moving files easily between local and remote locations. This can be most helpful when you are updating a site you have already published.

Remote Web Site view displays icons, with descriptive text, in both the local and remote Web site panes to indicate the publish status of your files.

You can use Remote Web Site view to publish your files to any location. You can publish your site to an extended Web server, to Web servers that support File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV), or to a location on your file system.

ShowDeciding where to publish

ShowPublish files and folders to an extended Web server

In Microsoft FrontPage, an extended Web server is one that is running FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions from Microsoft or later, Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, or SharePoint Team Services v1.0 from Microsoft. There are several benefits to publishing to a Web server that is running the FrontPage Server Extensions or Windows SharePoint Services. Your Web site will have enhanced functionality when it is published, allowing you to use form handlers and hit counters. FrontPage will also maintain your files and hyperlinks each time you publish the Web site.

Important  When publishing or synchronizing between Web sites based on SharePoint Services, certain elements, including list data, schemas, and Web Parts, will not be transferred.

ShowPublish files and folders to a server that supports WebDAV or FTP

You can publish files and folders in your Web site to servers that support Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) or File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Multiple users can use Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver to edit the same site over FTP. It's important to note, however, that the source control functionality in FrontPage is turned off by default.

FrontPage also supports passive FTP. Passive FTP allows you to publish files and folders from the local Web site to the remote Web site by using a different port each time.

When you use Remote Web Site view to publish your files or folders to a server that supports FTP or WebDAV, you must know the server name as well as your user name and password. If you are unsure about your user name, password, or server location, contact your Internet service provider (ISP) or Web site administrator.

ShowPublish files and folders to a file system

You can publish the files and folders in your Web site to a folder on your local file system or to a UNC path. For example, you can make a backup copy of your entire Web site by publishing it to a new disk-based location, such as C:\Backup.

Publishing files and folders rather than just copying them ensures that they will maintain their structure and that the Microsoft FrontPage components on your Web pages will work.

ShowChoosing the files to publish

By default, all files are marked for publishing. By using Remote Web Site view in Microsoft FrontPage, you can choose which files will be published and which will be held back. There are some files that you should not republish. For example, if your Web site has a guest book, republishing the guest book file will cause it to be replaced by a blank one. Other examples include pages with a hit counter or discussion Web sites.

ShowSynchronizing files between sites

In collaborative work environments, multiple authors may update both the local and remote Web sites. Microsoft FrontPage will compare the files in the local Web site to the published files in the remote Web site.

The following points highlight scenarios in which local and remote versions of files require that you synchronize them:

  • An author publishes to a staging server to test the files before making them visible to the public.
  • An author changes a file directly on the remote site, leaving the local version of that file out of date.
  • Two authors, one working on a local version of the Web site and one working directly on the remote Web site, update their respective versions of the same file.
  • Two authors, working with copies of the same Web site on their own computers, make changes to the same sets of files, and both want to publish to the remote site.

If FrontPage detects a newer version of a file on your local Web site, it will begin a synchronization to update both the local and remote Web sites, unless you specify otherwise. You can also choose to publish from the remote Web site to your local Web site.

Security  When you synchronize files using the Remote Web Site view, files on the remote site will be downloaded to the local site. If malicious files were placed on the remote site, the local site may be at risk. Be sure that only trusted users have access to the remote site before you attempt to synchronize files.

ShowManaging the files on the Web server

If your Internet service provider (ISP) or system administrator has given you a size limit on the Web server, file management is a necessity. Periodically deleting unused or old files can keep the size of your Web site down.

Because Microsoft FrontPage automatically synchronizes the files on your local drive, you must first delete or move the files or folders on your local Web site. Once you have published your Web site, FrontPage will prompt you about deleting the same files on the Web server.

If your Web server uses the FrontPage Server Extensions from Microsoft or Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, FrontPage can also match other actions on the Web server — such as moving or renaming files — the next time you publish your Web site. FrontPage will update your link bars, shared borders, and hyperlinks on the Web server to match the actions you performed on the local Web site.