breaking site down into subwebs

[Steve]

Thank you Ron, for answering my last question on why
my "recalculating hyperlinks" is NOT working, you wrote
this:
----------------------------------------------
"This is probably a hosting issue, but could be a
networking problem where TCP packets are dropped.

The problem can result from your website being too big for
the server to handle properly. Dividing the web into
subwebs will ease the burden when publishing and
recalculating hyperlinks. Also publishing/recalculating
whentraffic on the server is light (5am Sunday
morning ) may succeed."
----------------------------------------------
Now, my site does have about 4050 pages (yes, big), so
maybe you are on to something...I did try recalculating
hyperlinks last night (Sunday, around 4 am), still got
that server error, "could not parse", etc...

So my final question touches on your "dividing the web
into subwebs"...

How do I go about this??...

Do I simply divide the site up into 3 or 4 or 5 sections,
i.e. - different folders?...I can do this easily, but how
will this effect things when I do reports, when and if I
want to publish, etc?...How do I keep everything
interconnected?...For instance, will this cure my renaming
issue?...

How would you suggest breaking a site down into "subwebs",
or quite frankly, does it not matter how I break it
down?...

Can I simply break my site down into 4 or 5 folders, and
publish each folder individually??...Do I even need to
publish if I divide mt site up into 4 or 5 different
folders?...

I think I am 98% sure of what you mean, but I am just
looking for clarification, and want to know what the
potential ramifications are (if any) for doing this, i.e.,
will this create a "broken link" issue when I do reports
if the reports can only see 1/5 of the site at a time
because I have it "sub-divided" into 5 sections...

Thanx so much for your help...

Steve

 

[Ronx]

Do you have all your pages in one folder? If so I would divide them into
folders ASAP. 4000 odd pages in one folder will (probably) contribute to
slowing the server.

However, as Rob pointed out, a folder is not a subweb, and probably will not
stop your errors (assuming they are caused by the size of the web).

I would imagine that a web of that size covers several topics. You could
separate the topics and place each topic into its own subweb.
To create a subweb, create a folder. Move the pages and any related
files[1](CSS, images, JavaScript) into the folder. Then right click on the
folder and choose convert to web.

A subweb is a completely independent web. It has its own set of reports.
Links to other subwebs will be shown on the broken hyperlinks report as
external links, but these may be verified as being OK or otherwise.
If a page links to, say, file.htm in a different subweb, and file.htm is
renamed or moved to a different folder, then that link will be broken.
FrontPage cannot maintain links across subwebs (or webs for that matter).

A Subweb may be published with the root web or on its own (recommended).
Since each subweb is processed separately during publishing, the load on the
server is reduced during recalculating hyperlinks or processing web updates.

Your renaming issue may be related to the size of your web, and dividing the
web into subwebs may be the cure. However, this is all conjecture, the
proof will be to try it and see what happens.

IMO, your web needs to be broken into subwebs. This may be the cure-all, or
it may not cure anything. But the division will speed up publishing, and my
best guess is that, if the subwebs are small enough - you say 500 pages
worked in the past, maybe a thousand will work now, maybe that is too many
pages - the "cannot parse" error will go, and perhaps the renaming issue
will go as well.

[1] Some files are only used by the pages in the subweb. Place these in the
new folder.
Other files may be used by several subwebs, I would either keep these in the
root web, or copy them into the subweb. Copying makes it easier to manage
links, but updates to the files have to be copied to all copies which could
be forgotten.

HTH

Ron