Home Page Link Bars have stopped appearing

[Ricketrescue]

Using FP2003 my website has for a long while had vertical link bars on the
left hand side of the screen showing the next level down pages.

Last night part way through publishing an update there was some sort of
glitch in the process which showed several error messages in quick succession
too fast to read before they disappeared. The last one I think said something
like cancelling renaming index.htm will cause hyperlinks not to work, but it
didn't stay on the screen long.

Now the original website has no link bars on the home page and I don't
appear to be able to even get the link bars edit menu to appear.

I have also tried copying the website and opening the copy. In this i get a
dashed box where the link bar should be and text inviting me to edit the link
bars but then whichever setting I choose nothing appears. Its as if FP
doesn't know there are any child pages yet in navigation view they are all
there and visible

Grateful for any clues offered

 

[Hot-text]

Can we see the website!
You did backup your website first before you started to update it?

 

[Ricketrescue]

Can we see the website!
You did backup your website first before you started to update it?

Oops - Should have included the web address - www.ngtrains.com

and no, the only back up I have is quite dated and would need a lot of work
to catch up to the present content

 

[Ronx]

It appears that the navigation database needs
rebuilding.
I suggest that you publish the online site to
your PC and rebuild the navigation view there,
then publish back to the internet. Note that at
present there is a link in the left border (on
Contacts page) that points to the _private folder
- this link should not be pointing there.

You could ask your host if they have a backup of
the site - most hosts create daily backups, but
may charge for restoring the files.

In future, it is best practise to always work on
the copy on your PC - this will ensure that you
have a backup on the internet (even if a little
outdated) to fall back on, and all your mistakes
in editing are kept private. Of course, an
additional local backup is also useful...

--
Ron Symonds
Microsoft MVP (Expression Web)
http://www.rxs-enterprises.org/fp/wf-menu.aspx



Ricketrescue wrote on 12/04/2010 :

"Hot-text" wrote:

 

[Ricketrescue]

Ron
Thanks for the advice. Have tried the web host and they don't have a back up
:-(

Your suggestion of working on the local copy and not the web copy suggests I
haven't explained myself well. I had worked on the local copy and all looked
fine. I then published it to the web and part way through it did something
bizarre resulting in a load of error messages flashing on the screen before
FP closed itself. The result being that both the local and published copy
have ended up corrupted.

As I type the online version is publishing to my local machine which will
take awhile.

Could you explain how I rebuild the navigation as I am not sure how I do
this and can you give me more details of the link you can see pointing to the
private folder as I cant see the link you mean

Paul

 

[Ronx]

"The result being that both the local and published copy
have ended up corrupted."

That is nasty!

The link on Contacts has disappeared, but it is present on the Gallery and "Track and Rail" pages:
In the left border the button labelled "Up" is linked to
.../_private/index.htm
In View Source in a browser look for
<a href="../../_private/index.htm" language="JavaScript" onmouseover="if(MSFPhover) document['MSFPnav2'].src=MSFPnav2h.src" onmouseout="if(MSFPhover) document['MSFPnav2'].src=MSFPnav2n.src"><img src="../../_derived/up_cmp_ng-trains-05a010_vbtn.gif" width="140" height="28" border="0" alt="Up" name="MSFPnav2"></a>

Rebuilding the navigation view means:
Open the website in FrontPage
Open Navigation View
Drag the pages from the Folder List into the navigation view to form a navigation tree, with the Home page at the top.
At present, it appears that _private/index.htm is in the navigation view, and other pages are linked to it. No pages in the _private folder should be in the navigation, since they cannot be browsed to by anonymous users.

After the navigation is completed, republish to your host - publishing changed pages should be enough to update the navigation on the host, but make a backup of the local site first.

--
Ron Symonds
Microsoft MVP (Expression Web)
http://www.rxs-enterprises.org/fp/wf-menu.aspx


It happens that Ricketrescue formulated :

Ron
Thanks for the advice. Have tried the web host
and they don't have a back up :-(

Your suggestion of working on the local copy
and not the web copy suggests I haven't
explained myself well. I had worked on the
local copy and all looked fine. I then
published it to the web and part way through it
did something bizarre resulting in a load of
error messages flashing on the screen before
FP closed itself. The result being that both
the local and published copy have ended up
corrupted.

 

[Ricketrescue]

Ron
I think it may be worse than I feared. I am not sure what to do about the
private links - more to the point, I fear the consequence of anything I might
do whilst not really understanding what it is I am doing.

Also the navigation view shows the navigation tree just as it should be but
its not producing the link bar buttons.

I have been wondering about a rewrite of the site and moving from FP to
Expression Web I now wonder if this might be the time.

Paul

"The result being that both the local and published copy
have ended up corrupted."

That is nasty!

The link on Contacts has disappeared, but it is present on the Gallery and "Track and Rail" pages:
In the left border the button labelled "Up" is linked to
.../_private/index.htm
In View Source in a browser look for
<a href="../../_private/index.htm" language="JavaScript" onmouseover="if(MSFPhover) document['MSFPnav2'].src=MSFPnav2h.src" onmouseout="if(MSFPhover) document['MSFPnav2'].src=MSFPnav2n.src"><img src="../../_derived/up_cmp_ng-trains-05a010_vbtn.gif" width="140" height="28" border="0" alt="Up" name="MSFPnav2"></a>

Rebuilding the navigation view means:
Open the website in FrontPage
Open Navigation View
Drag the pages from the Folder List into the navigation view to form a navigation tree, with the Home page at the top.
At present, it appears that _private/index.htm is in the navigation view, and other pages are linked to it. No pages in the _private folder should be in the navigation, since they cannot be browsed to by anonymous users.

After the navigation is completed, republish to your host - publishing changed pages should be enough to update the navigation on the host, but make a backup of the local site first.

--
Ron Symonds
Microsoft MVP (Expression Web)
http://www.rxs-enterprises.org/fp/wf-menu.aspx


It happens that Ricketrescue formulated :

Ron
Thanks for the advice. Have tried the web host
and they don't have a back up :-(

Your suggestion of working on the local copy
and not the web copy suggests I haven't
explained myself well. I had worked on the
local copy and all looked fine. I then
published it to the web and part way through it
did something bizarre resulting in a load of
error messages flashing on the screen before
FP closed itself. The result being that both
the local and published copy have ended up
corrupted.

As I type the online version is publishing to
my local machine which will take awhile.

Could you explain how I rebuild the navigation
as I am not sure how I do this and can you
give me more details of the link you can see
pointing to the private folder as I cant see
the link you mean

"Ronx" wrote:

.