Testing and publishing a site using Frontpage 2003

[SHANTA MENON]

web site www.cntmicrosystems.com
This site was written using Dreamweaver. Since I am comfortable with
Frontpage, I imported the site into FP2003. Removed all the Forms in the
program and replaced/configured as shown in FP2003 manuals. I need some help
before I upload this to the site.
1. when I configured the forms and tried to save it, the systems gave me an
error message saying this form cannot be ..., would you like to remove the
e-mail recipient? I answered NO, I think that is what I used to do when I
designed the site in Frontpage 2000. So is it O.K.?
2. Is there anything else I need to do? I did not make any changes other
that the various forms. I am scared to publish the site, because I do not
know what will happen to the site, if what I am doing is not right. Do not
know how to bring the original site back if that happens.
Any experts out there? Please help.
Thanks

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

1. This is normal if you're working on a disk-based web, or a local web
server that doesn't have SMTP set up in order to handle the emails. This
usually sorts itself out during publishing, you just need to make sure that
the server extensions on the web server are configured for SMTP.

2. Just make sure that the site is configured for the FP Server Extensions
and you should be OK. To test things though, you can always try a publish to
a sub-web. That can give you a good idea if things are going to work such as
posting to a new subweb on your server called hopeful test (or similar).
This way you can play without over-writing the main site and see if it
works. You may also want to make a backup of the original first. This isn't
so difficult actually. What you can do is, instead of opening a local web
site and publishing to the server, you can open the web on the server
through File | Open Web and entering the server name, then setting a local
directory on your computer to be the remote web site. Then you just publish
down from the server to your local computer and now you have a complete
backup. Just be careful that you select the write source and destination.
It's easy to get them mixed up and over-write the wrong site (it's happened
to me plenty).

Hope this helps,
Mark Fitzpatrick
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage

 

[SHANTA MENON]

Mark, thanks a Million for the help. It makes me feel good to know that it
will work and I am going to try it. But I would like to clarify couple of
point.
1. To make a back up, you say File/Open Web and enter the server name ...
Do you mean Import the site from cntmicrosystems.com? If not, I am not
sure what is the server name I should use. Please advise.
2. I have only made changes to the Forms on our site. Everything else is
the same as the original site. However, I noticed that the Navigation view
just shows the Home page and none of the other pages are shown. When I
created the site using Frontpage, I had to create a navigation structure to
all the other pages. Is this normal in Frontpage 2003 or something to do
with Dreamweaver? Please let me know if I need to create the Navigation
structure.
3. My hosting company has Frontpage extension enabled, so it is O.K.
However, I do not understand what you mean by testing by publishing "to a
sub-web on your server called hopeful test (or similar) and how will I test
it? Would I still use www.cntmicrosystems.com? How would the URL know it is
the subweb?

4. The last question is, when I import the site to a folder and publish
from the same folder back, would everything be the same? Is
downloading/uploading between Frontpage Frontpage and Dreamweaver
interchangable?
Hope you have a little time to help me on these questions. It will be a
great help to me.
Thanks.
Shanta

 

[Ronx]

Inline below
--
Ron Symonds - Microsoft MVP (FrontPage)
Reply only to group - emails will be deleted unread.
FrontPage Support: http://www.frontpagemvps.com/

Mark, thanks a Million for the help. It makes me feel good to know that
it
will work and I am going to try it. But I would like to clarify couple
of
point.
1. To make a back up, you say File/Open Web and enter the server name ...
Do you mean Import the site from cntmicrosystems.com? If not, I am
not
sure what is the server name I should use. Please advise.

Do NOT Import - this will leave behind some files, such all those files
that cannot be reached directly from the Home Page, including databases,
shared borders, include files, navigation....
Publish is the operative word. Open the cntmicrosystems.com site in
FrontPAge and publish all pages to your hard disc, as Mark said.

2. I have only made changes to the Forms on our site. Everything else
is
the same as the original site. However, I noticed that the Navigation
view
just shows the Home page and none of the other pages are shown. When I
created the site using Frontpage, I had to create a navigation structure
to
all the other pages. Is this normal in Frontpage 2003 or something to do
with Dreamweaver? Please let me know if I need to create the Navigation
structure.

You only need the navigation structure if you use FP navigation components.
DreamWeaver doesn't, so you don;t need the Navigation.

3. My hosting company has Frontpage extension enabled, so it is O.K.
However, I do not understand what you mean by testing by publishing "to a
sub-web on your server called hopeful test (or similar) and how will I
test
it? Would I still use www.cntmicrosystems.com? How would the URL know
it is
the subweb?

Publish your local copy to www.cntmicrosystems.com/subwebname , where
subwebname is a folder that does not yet exist on the website. This will
be an independant website that will be functional on its own, provided you
use relative links (FrontPage usually does this), and do not use absolute
or root-relative links.
An absolute link is similar to http://example.com/path/page.htm
A root-relative link is similar to /path/page.htm (note the leading / )
A relative link is similar to path/page.htm (note the missing leading
)

4. The last question is, when I import the site to a folder and publish
from the same folder back, would everything be the same? Is
downloading/uploading between Frontpage Frontpage and Dreamweaver
interchangable?

Again - do NOT Import - always Publish. Import is for individual files,
not complete websites.
If the web has FP extensions, then downloading and uploading with
Dreamweaver may corrupt the extensions. (Downloading won't cause
corruption, but the subsequent upload will).

Downloading/uploading with FP should not cause problems.
There may be some Dreamweaver components that are not compatible with
FrontPage, nested Dynamic WebTemplates for example. So a backup of the
website is essential before you start editing with FP.