Round Table
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Website Publishing
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The web site has now been designed, built and thoroughly tested. Now it
is time to publish it for the world to see. What do we mean by
"publish a web site? Publishing is the process of
transferring your HTML and image files from your PC to your web host provider's
web server.
The exact details of how you publish your site will vary depending on
the software your are using and your web host company. There are two
main ways of publishing. Firstly, there is File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
Your web host provider will provide you with the FTP server name,
directory and path to where your web will be kept. You will also be
given a user name and password so that only you have access to make
changes.
Many web development software applications have Hyper Text Transfer
Protocol (HTTP) functionality. This can remove some the work from
publishing and managing your web space. Microsoft FrontPage is an
example if this type of application. If you are using FrontPage ensure
the server to you are publishing has FrontPage Extensions installed.
FrontPage will do things like synchronise the web files on your PC with
those on the web server. When you have made changes to the web on
your PC the next time you publish your web FrontPage will ensure that
the published web matches that on your PC.
HTTP is the protocol that is used
when your web browser downloads a page from a web site. FTP is a
protocol specifically developed for managing files on a remotely
connected computer. FTP is the most efficient method for publishing
your web.
As previously mentioned an FTP
program is similar to Windows Explorer. You can either buy or obtain
free FTP software. Your PC is an FTP client and an FTP server is
present on your web server. When you start up an FTP
program for the first time you will need to tell the program where to
look for your website. This is done in a set up dialogue where you
will be asked for information such as what is your FTP server’s
name, what is the port number (usually 21), and your password. Your
FTP server will be called ftp.yoursite.com where yoursite.com is the
name of your web site. Close the dialogue box and you will ready to
login to your web server.
Click on the icon for your web
site and the FTP program will automatically initiate a connection from
your PC to the web server. On establishing a connection the folder
structure of the web server will be downloaded to your PC. You will
now be able to view folders and files as if they were actually on your
local hard disk. It’s all drag and drop from here on. Publishing the
web is simple as selecting the folders and files that are your web and
dragging them to the "public_html" folder on the web server.
The FTP program will the transfer them from the PC to the web server.
The speed of transfer depends on many factors. Broadband will be
quicker than dial-up. Time of day also makes a difference. The
Internet is heavily used during evening periods. If you are
experiencing frustrating slow upload times then consider performing
transfers during early morning or very late evening.
FTP programs generally maintain an activity log that can be made to be
visible. Use this to check on progress. When the transfer is complete
log out. Now test your web site. Type the site URL into the browser
and click go. If all is well the index.htm file just uploaded to the
"public_html" folder will be found and served to your PC.
Things can sometimes go wrong. Get into the habit of taking damage
limitation precautions. Once you have a tested and working web on the
server create a folder called "backup" in the
"home" folder of the web server. Copy the whole web into
this folder. If, on uploading a new version, your web should not work
as expected you can quickly recover by deleting the new web from
"public_html" and copy the version stored in
"backup" to "public_html". This will keep your
site downtime to a minimum. Downtime costs you money by not being
available to potential customers.
Another scenario is when you have
a working web on your web server and have completed preparation of an
enhanced version on your PC. Assume the enhanced version has had links
rearranged and is quite different from the production version on the
web server. Create a folder called something like "new_version"
and publish the new web to this folder. Site visitors can still access
the working version during the upload. Should something go wrong
during the file transfer you won't left with a bunch of web pages that
have broken links and a web that doesn't work.
Always keep a backup of the web
on CD. Ensure that the web is backed up prior to making changes on
your PC copy of the web. At least copy it to another folder so that it
can be copied back following a catastrophe. This can save several
hours in unproductive time lost troubleshooting a sick web. If you
need to recover using your CD backup remember to change all file
attributes to read and write after copying the files back to hard
disk. Files are saved to CD are saved as read only.
[ Previous ]
OK,
that's a whiz around web site building and publishing. Creative and fun. Now we need
to look at Documenting the business.
