Query--pros&cons of developing local vs. remote

G

Guest

Hi all...

Great newsgroup...very appreciative of the fast and
knowledgeable response here.

I had mentioned in other msgs that I've been developing
my website on my local hard drive, and then publishing
it to the remote location. Reasoning:

-- I don't have constant broadband access.
-- I'm nervous about website hacking, and use FP's publish
feature as a write-only channel.

However, I discovered yesterday that emailing from
forms doesn't seem to work unless I set form props
on the copy of the page resident at the remote location.

It seems that there's some mysterious handshaking
between the page containing the form and the
remote website infrastructure, that occurs only when
you're editing pages that are resident at the remote location.

This has made me want to get the mystical list of
all the other gotchas resulting from developing locally
and then publishing remotely.

I've spent many, many hours zooming around and banging my head
on the walls of the MSDN Library, but haven't found an actual
MS-tech document on the pros&cons of each approach.
Of course I'd be grateful to sit at the feet of the masters
in this group and hear comments, but can anyone point me
at formal documentation (or even articles) on:

-- Strategies, pros&cons, and work-arounds for developing
local vs remote?
-- Point me at a technical description of exactly _what_
FP2003 does to maintain the coherency of a website
(such file matching and hyperlink recalculation) and
handshaking for forms, and other features that seem
to require working remotely?

I might also say at this point that I'm _really_ unhappy about
the quality of the MS FP2003 Help feature.

Regards,
MVSmith
 
K

Kevin Spencer

I don't know why you're having problems with forms that you create locally
and then publish, but you should not be having any. Assuming that this is
not an issue, developing and testing locally is really the most logical
method to employ. It prevents errors from popping up on your live site due
to not having tested things thoroughly prior to deployment.

--
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
..Net Developer
Microsoft MVP
Big things are made up
of lots of little things.
 
T

Thomas A. Rowe

I work locally 99%, then publish to the remote server, which are all Windows 2000 IIS servers
running FP2002 extensions, and yes I sometime do have to open the live/remote site to correct some
functions, mainly in my case the database connection, but to have to do it for forms in really not a
big issue.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, WebCircle, MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================
 
G

Guest

Thanks, Kevin...

Hmm...that I shouldn't be having any problems developing locally
is good to hear. I've been having a range of problems that are
making me wonder just what the heck is going on under the hood
with FP2003:

-- Saving a simple HTML doc (say, <1K and containing 1 external
hyperlink) locally takes ~30sec, but remotely takes perhaps
~5sec. This is after recalculating hyperlinks at both locations.
-- Consistent problems with files not matching local-to-remote.
-- Email forms not being "registered" or whatever, unless props
set on remote copy, as described in my original post.

These problems lead me to want to understand how FP keeps
track of files in a website and their interconnections, and how
FP interacts with the FP Server Extensions at the remote server.

Regards,
MVSmith
 
W

wp

I make it a point to always create a web locally. That way I will always have a backup. There are times that you don't want to overwrite files created by FP on the server, like for discussion group, etc. You just mark those pages as do not publish. There are times also that you may wish to edit files on the remote site, then publish that file to your local for backup. The form problems should have no bearing with editing locally or remotely.
 
K

Kevin Spencer

Well, I don't know any of the details about how you're attempting to do
these things, but I always publish my entire site (changed pages only) in
order to keep things straight. You can publish piecemeal, but it is
trickier, as there are dependencies you have to keep in mind when doing so.
Publishing with changed pages only takes no more time, but FrontPage keeps
track of the dependencies.

--
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
..Net Developer
Microsoft MVP
Big things are made up
of lots of little things.
 

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