Probably 90% of the time the issue is the sub-folder that was introduced in
2002. The customer has no clue that everything other then the home page went
to a sub-folder, there is nothing to tell them this. This is a really big
hurdle for someone coming from 2000 to grasp.
The reason this is even a problem is because probably 90% of customers have
no clue that Publisher will upload the site. They all use a separate upload
client. And in doing so don't grab the sub-folder. If Publisher is used to
upload, as is the intent by design, the sub-folder is not an issue because
Publisher knows what to upload. It's when the customer takes on the burden
of needing to know what to upload that the issue comes in.
This has been a big topic since the release of 2002. The reason it may
appear the issue is becoming more common now is I believe because of the
apparent fact that a majority of customers skipped over the 2002 version.
I've definitely been seeing that trend, 2000 users having skipped 2002 now
going to 2003.
And that's a big jump when you consider the degree of changes in the 2002
version and then add on the 2003 changes. I'd put that on par with a
FrontPage 98 user moving to FP 2003.
I myself don't view the sub-folder as a problem or the real issue, the real
problem is that the customer doesn't know to upload the web using Publisher.
Once they know that then everything else falls into place. Of course this is
an education problem. To some degree this is a customer failure because if
the customer goes to Help in Publisher and searches on 'publish' the
information is there. And to some degree it's a lack of publications on the
product. I think the last time I saw a book on Publisher that even covered a
web publication it was showing how to upload the web files using the Web
Publishing Wizard (which is now deprecated).
Indeed the recent articles I have authored for Techtrax -
http://www.mousetrax.com/techtrax.asp - have been on this subject, the March
2004 issue covers FTP, and the October 2004 issue covers HTTP. And I believe
that the publishers of the Office website have also done such articles.
As for the other 10% ( these numbers are imo btw) that is typically a
customer that is framing their site which creates issues with the relative
links written by Publisher.
