Publishing web site file name

[Cadkiller]

Group;

It says in the help that when publishing your web site to use "index" as the
default name for the home page. When doing this I get "index_files" added to
the path of all your web pages.

Is there anyway to get rid of this in the path of the page names?
If I can't can I change the name from index to html or web? That way I would
at least get "html_files" or "web_files" added to every page of my site.
Better than index IMO.

Here is an example of one of my page names.

http://precisiondraftingllc.com/index_files/ContactUs.htm

 

[DavidF]

Your home page needs to be named index.htm or one of the other default file
names that browsers look for when you click on www.precisiondraftingllc.com
.. If you use try to use web.htm then the browser won't recongnize it as the
home page, and thus won't open your site.

You have the option of not using the supporting folder. Tools > Options >
Web tab and untick "Organize supporting files...". Unfortuanately, then all
your page names and images will be renamed, and your link will look like
this: http://precisiondraftingllc.com/index_ContactUs.htm . I suspect that
having your page names changed to index_ContactUs.htm would be even worse
than your other option.

One other option available is to build your site with multiple Publisher
files. For example, if you produced your ContactUs.htm page as a single page
website, you could Publish to the Web, and save as ContactUs.htm instead of
index.htm. Your HTML output would consist of a ContactUs.htm file, and an
index_files folder containing only your graphics. You create a subfolder on
your site (say "Contact"), and upload the HTML, and then write an absolute
link from your main site:
http://precisiondraftingllc.com/Contact/ContactUs.htm You would not be able
to use the wizard navbar, as it uses relative links. If this approach is of
any interest to you, read:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/dbartosik/archive/2006/01/16/81264.aspx

This is one of those limitations of using Publisher to build websites. Don't
get me wrong...I like using Pub for web building, but I must say, that given
the sophisticated and specialized software you use for your business, I am a
bit surprised you haven't invested in specialized software for web building.

DavidF

 

[Cadkiller]

David;

I know Publisher isn't the best tool for creating web sites; but it was the
easiest for me at the time. I tried Frontpage and found it very complex. I
wasn't able to properly convert my website from Publisher to Frontpage; so I
stuck with Publisher and I'm pretty happy with the results.

I actually was creating my company brochure with Publisher and found the
create a web publication tool and "Shazaam" there it was pretty much all
setup.

My only problems are the address of the pages and the browser issue. I can
live with both of them; but would like the browser issue resolved soon.

PS: It's hard enough for me to have to learn all these complex programs for
CAD and I also have to learn and master web creation.

Thanks for your help.

 

[DavidF]

Thanks...I was just curious. That is pretty much the how and why I use
Publisher to build my websites. I also think what you have accomplished is a
good example of just how good of site one can produce with Publisher.
Hopefully, removing the master pages will fix your cross browser issue.

DavidF

 

[Cadkiller]

David;

Thanks for the Blog link about building a web site with multiple Publisher
web publications. It explains very well how the "index_files" works when
publishing a web site.

I have tried to delete my master page and couldn't figure out how to do it.
All I was able to do was ignore the master for every page in my publication;
but I wasn't able to delete it after I ignored it for all my pages. Is there
some trick to it?

Thanks again

 

[DavidF]

You are welcome for the Blog link. I try to reference David Bartosik's
material as much as possible as he does a much better job explaining
things...

To be candid, I have never used the master page, and am not sure how to
delete it. Did you go to View > Master Page and try to delete from edit
master page toolbar? Have your tried producing and testing new HTML with all
the elements off the master pages, and marking it "ignore master". Just
Publish to the Web to a folder on your computer where you can find it, open
FireFox, and browse to the folder and the index.htm file, and see if it
works.

If that doesn't work, and before I suggest another alternative, I decided to
look at your site again. http://precisiondraftingllc.com/index.htm When I
load your home page in FireFox, I get one very long page with your navbar
text in the middle of the page, and at the very end of the page what appears
to be all your "borders". One of the things I liked about your page was the
way you used "borders" around your banner, and separating your navbar from
your other content. Now I find myself wondering if your problems with
FireFox has to do with those "borders". I am wondering if that is what
FireFox is choking on.

Those "borders" appear to be some sort of shape or object with a shadow, and
I am not sure how you built them. Are they on the master pages? You might
find that even after moving everything off the master page, that FireFox may
still not know what to do with them, which would mean that you would have to
change your design...hope not. Also, the vertical one may be a bit close to
the navbar. Try nudging it to the right, away from the navbar and test that.

Anyway, to go back to deleting your master pages, I guess since I am not
sure of how to use or delete master pages, if you are unable to figure it
out, I would simply open a second instance of Publisher, put your background
GIF in, and make duplicate pages to equal the number of pages you have in
your site. Then I would go to each page of your old Pub doc, click on the
page, and Edit > Select All, and group all the design elements. Then Copy,
and Paste into the new Pub doc, move the grouped elements around until they
are properly aligned, and ungroup. It might be a bit tedious, and a pain,
but it would get you there.

Let me know how it comes out.

DavidF

 

[Cadkiller]

David;

The borders are just 2 lines next to eachother, one grey and one white. They
use to be on the master page. I deleted all the objects from the master page
and pasted them to every sheet on my site. I figured by using a master it
would save on loading times. Not sure if that really helped any; but I don't
think the master made any difference. It still doesn't display properly and
my nav bar doesn't work with these other browsers. It's a good thing that
most people visiting my web site use IE.

I just found a problem with the new IE viewing my site. When you use the
zoom feature, my borders get all messed up using IE. The zoom works just fine
with AOL's new browser.

I see that Netscape knows about these problems and in their new browser they
have a covert to IE feature.

 

[DavidF]

Cadkiller,

Well that's disappointing on many levels. Pub 2003 was designed to "exploit
the technologies of the Internet Explorer browser", and as such produces
"smarter" html code for IE, and "dumber" code for other browsers. This
results in a lack of good cross browser support across all other browsers.
With that said, many Pub 2003 sites work just fine in FireFox, and I have
been able to help many change their design and/or settings to make them work
pretty well in FireFox, but for the moment, I am stumped on what to do with
your site to make it more compatible, and it sounds like we might even have
problems with the new IE7 properly rendering a Publisher website...aarrgghh!
Microsoft sure isn't making things easy, are they?

I am assuming that you did run the Design Checker to see if that found any
problems, and went to Tools > Options > Web tab and unticked "Rely on
VML..." and "Allow PNG...". And you tried switching the default Encoding
from what ever it is to Unicode (UTF8), Western European (ISO), and Western
European (Windows)??

I liked that line effect...thanks for explaining it. When you study the HMTL
output, are those lines converted to an image? In all your spare time,
perhaps you can try a couple of experiments. First of all, try removing
those lines entirely from your home page, Publish to the Web, to a test
folder on your computer, and try opening the new page in FireFox or
Netscape. I would suggest that you download Firefox if you haven't already,
for testing purposes anyway. If your page loads ok, then we know the problem
is with the lines.

Assuming that the lines are the problem, then add the lines back to your
design, one group at a time. Start with your banner, and place just the
upper two lines, and test again. Make sure they are not overlapping an image
or text box. If the one set of lines create a problem, then use your nudge
tool to move the text box and image boxes down, away from the lines. Try
about 10 clicks, and if that works, move the boxes back up a few ticks at a
time until they are too close again. Sometimes having elements too close to
each other can create problems, and this is what I am having you test. If
successful, then you will know about how much space you need to make for the
lines. Just add back the lines one group at a time, adjusting the spacing.

I guess what I am suggesting is the you "reverse engineer" your site,
removing all the design elements and adding them back one at a time until
you find which one is messing up the works. For example I notice that you
are using a bulleted list on your home page. I have always had problems with
trying to use bullets, so perhaps pull that text box into the scratch area
and test the output, to see if that makes any difference. If you find, or
perhaps I should say WHEN you find the design element that is creating the
problem, then you can either change your design, or post back for a possible
workaround.

And in the meantime, you can build a textual menu that will work in IE and
FireFox, and put it on the bottom of each of your pages, just in case the
Pub navbar doesn't work. Reference: "Code your own textual navigation menu
in Publisher":
http://msmvps.com/blogs/dbartosik/archive/2006/01/16/81255.aspx

And there is an article on David's Blog that might be worth reading about
cross browser compatibility for some perspective:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/dbartosik/articles/80825.aspx

Sorry, I haven't been more help...good luck.

DavidF

 

[Cadkiller]

David;

You've been very helpfull and I thank you again for taking the time and
sharing your knowledge about Publisher.

As far as reverse engineering my web site, maybe when I have nothing better
to do. I tried all the different possibilties you mentioned before and all
with the same result. I have run the design checker and it is clean.

I'm trying to get in touch with David Bartosik so he can include my web site
in his list of Publisher sites. Do you know his email?

Take care;
Ed Borg

 

[DavidF]

Ed,

Sorry I haven't been able to come up with a solution.

I will forward this email to David Bartosik in case he doesn't spot it. I am
hesistant to post my own email address for fear of spambots picking it up,
so I won't do that to David.

DavidF

 

[DavidF]

Here is the URL for this guy: http://precisiondraftingllc.com/index.htm

I thought it was in the thread I forwarded...sorry.

Hey I noticed some formatting changing on the blog...is that you or
Microsoft?

DavidF

 

[Nancyenergy]

I use index and it works fine on Internet Explorer but it isn't even listed

 

[MsNurse]

I see the website where the original inquiry came from is still with _index
files...so should I presume a resolution to this publisher issue has not been
remedied? I am reading the postings--looking for an answer to the same
problem. I have printed out your information regarding multiple web pub files
and will read through them tonight. Please advise if you received any updates
from your email to David. Thanks!

 

[DavidF]

MsNurse,

Sorry, but it is impossible to decipher what your question or issue is from
this thread. Please post back with details of your problem or issue, a link
to the page where you are having the problem, and the version of Publisher
that you are using.

DavidF

 

[MsNurse]

I focus on assisting diversity businesses, particularly small, veteran and
woman owned. Most are with web sites, brochures, catalogs, etc. However, I
have run across a few that needed assistance from the beginning. In these
cases I have used the simple site builders tools (templates) offered by the
host for their website--I have very little background in IT--unless it's
medical software--but that doesnt help with website developing! In any event,
after volunteering to design numerous websites- it was time to enhance my
services with better tools. I purchased Microsoft Office Small business 2007
which I felt would really augment my capabilities--lots of good stuff in
there to help launch small businesses, which--incidently--was a BIG
investment for me- volunteering my services. I also needed web presence for
myself and I used Yahoo to host my site, opting out of their site builder as
I felt my Microsoft tools would be so much better! Now I am looking into
hosting opportunities so I can assist small businesses even more...before I
can do that I need to improve--hence, my search here--to look for answers to
the same question posted in Sept 2006 which you will find below. The extra
background was provided to insure you understand I am new to the web arena
but I really (really) want to help some of our veterans and women with an
American dream to own their very own business. My site is www.medcepts.com.

Below was the original question posted. Thanks in advance for your assistance!

It says in the help that when publishing your web site to use "index" as the
default name for the home page. When doing this I get "index_files" added to
the path of all your web pages.

Is there anyway to get rid of this in the path of the page names?

Here is an example of one of my page names.

http://precisiondraftingllc.com/index_files/ContactUs.htm

 

[DavidF]

Publisher 2003 and 2007 gives you the option of using a subfolder to
organize your html files, or not. If you choose to use the subfolder, which
will be called "index_files" if you use the default of "index.htm" for the
home page, then the link or path HAS to include the subfolder, or it would
not find the other pages or supporting graphics. Your site uses the
subfolder option as per your link:
http://precisiondraftingllc.com/index_files/ContactUs.htm You have also
chosen to custom name your ContactUs.htm file rather than let Publisher
choose a name. A good practice in my opinion.

If you go to Tools > Options > web tab and uncheck the option to use the
support folder. Then when you publish your web files, they are all loose,
and the links/paths are written differently. In your case the link would
then be written as http://precisiondraftingllc.com/index_ContactUs.htm (an
underscore separates index and ContactUs.htm...not a space). All pages would
have the "index_yourpage.htm" format.

You have to choose between the two options.

Now a question for you. Why is having "index_files" in the path to the page
an issue or problem? I am not sure why it was a problem for the original
poster. Perhaps if you describe the reason why it is a problem for you, I
can answer your question more fully.

DavidF

 

[MsNurse]

"index_files" is not a problem to me--as you can see opening my website I am
still using Pub. --- acknowedging index_files is, without a doubt, evidence
of utilizing Microsoft Publisher. I was unfamiliar with seeing index_files
after working with other software. To be honest, I am surprised Microsoft
hasnt come up with a quick fix for same--since this string goes back a couple
of years. The only reason I explored finding out if Microsoft did come up
with a fix (or if I was missing something) was due to my last 45 clients. I
encourage buying Microsoft Office for the many tools it offers for new
businesses. It seems most unfortunate when clients see the "index_files" in
my site they are very discouraged. They simply don't like it. Let's face it,
David, it's certainly not as good as seeing it without index_files.
Regardless of the preferences of others, I still have my index_files proudly
displayed! FYI...Your response seemed as though you looked at precision's
website which is not mine--it seems he gave up also and just stuck with the
index_files also! It is easier than starting all over! Thanks for everything.

Why is having "index_files" in the path to the page
an issue or problem? I am not sure why it was a problem for the original
poster. Perhaps if you describe the reason why it is a problem for you, I
can answer your question more fully.

 

[DavidF]

MSFT will not be fixing this, as it is by design. It is not a bug.

But as I said, you have the option of not using the subfolder. Uncheck the
option under tools > options > web tab temporarily. Publish to a folder on
your hard drive where you can study the files. All the files will be at the
same level as the index.htm file. There will be no index_files folder in a
path/link to other pages in your site. Recheck the option if you prefer the
use of the subfolder. Your choice.

You are only the second person I can remember commenting negatively about
this in the many years that I have been lurking around this newsgroup. I
really don't think most people even notice...or care. Your experience is
apparently different.

DavidF