FrontPage XP web project; losing bots/theme in publishing to web

[Nick Kontis]

Help!!
I have created a web locally using FrontPage XP (Office XP SP3). The site
works locally except for forms that require FrontPage Extensions on a web
server. When I upload the site to the web server (running FP Extensions 2002)
the navigation borders and nav controls are missing....the theme also was
lost. This site is a 'test' site which will replace an existing site at the
root of the website. The root site was created using the same steps as below
but it worked AOK throughout. The only difference was I was at SP1 for Office
XP...I installed SP3 to see if the problem would clear...

Steps taken to create test site...
1-Created new web project on local disk and test content, theme, and
navigation. (Not created as a sub-web of the original root web site but in a
new web project folder.)
2-created a sub web below the root site using FP admin on server
3-published local site to server by right clicking highest order folder
object in FrontPage client folder list and selecting the sub-web created by
FP admin
4-tested site for content, nav and theme....no borders, nav, theme. The web
components on the form work fine...creates the file in _private.
5-Since I needed to demo the site for others to review, I re-created the
nav , borders & theme live on the sub-web and tested again ...AOK. I then
published the test site back to a new empty web project folder locally and
experienced the same result...no borders, nav or theme.
6-Installed Office XP SP3...re-did steps...same results

Thanks!

 

[Rick Budde]

Subwebs do NOT share the theme of the parent web. You
need to apply a theme to your subweb on your disk based
web and then republish to your server based web.

When you applied the theme on the live site and then
republished from your disk based site (which had no
theme), you published a "blank" (my term) theme to your
server based web which resulted in no theme.

I hope this makes sense and helps you out.

 

[Nick Kontis]

Rick-
The intention was not to have the subweb inherit or share theme or nav...I
created a new theme and the site had it's own nav schema...all of which were
lost when publishing up to the website, and then again lost after applying
theme and nav live on the website and publishing back to my local drive, but
the theme seemed to stay intact (?).

I think I followed your explanation of the blank site influencing
publishing. I tried publishing the working site from the web server to the
local disk by using Browse, creating a new folder, and then accepting
FrontPage creating a web in the new folder and transferring the content. The
result is still the same....no nav schemas but the theme transferred OK.

I am still mystefied and need a solution as I will be doing this often.

Thanks.

 

[Rick Budde]

Nick:

Do you have folders on both your disk based site and
server based site that are called "_themes"
and "_overlay"? These folders and some other folders that
start with an underline are files that are created by
Front Page as a part of a Front Page web site. They
contain files which provide to theme and navigation
buttons.

When you publish from Front Page using the
preferred "http" method (see Help) these files are copied
from the disk based web to the server based web. If you
are using an FTP approach to publishing, you need to be
sure that these files are part of the publishing process.

If you want to "transfer content", you are MUCH better
off using the Front Page publish feature. You should not
perform any file actions outside of Front Page using
Windows Explorer or whatever. You will likely screw up
your site if you do.

 

[Nick Kontis]

To Rick & all other interested parties....
I have been using HTTP Publish method from FrontPage all along, but after
reading the last post I did some exhaustive perusing with FTP on the site and
inspection of local shares, and discovering a mixture of missing and present
hidden folders. I then did some experimenting with FrontPage projects to test
my hypothesis that there was a difference in the behavior of publish
commands. I believe I found a trend [trap?] that explains these phonomena and
will help myself and others to avoid problems. What I discovered is that in
using the right-click publish command, regardless of what is selected in the
folder list frame, borders and nav DO NOT get transferred. I verified this
locally and on the live test website. I have been using a mix of methods in
'hurrying' my work to my test site.

The absolute foolproof method is to tag the highest order object in the
folder list frame and use File...Publish Web from the FrontPage menu. Truth
be told, Microsoft's FP Help is not very explicit in this area....thanks to
troubles we all experience and dialog such as this will ultimately influence
the quality of product help, right? Conversely, help on when and where the
right-click publish command is useful would complete the circle and the
software would be perfect...right?

Thanks!!!