Web site mess

[Matthew Schwarz]

Greetings from Japan,

I took over an office Web site from the previous guy, who himself had taken
it over from someone else, who had taken it over from someone else. None of
us are/were web professionals and none of us really had training, and our
office won't send us for training.

I use Frontpage 2002. I use it -- and it has always been used -- only as a
page editor. No one has taken advantage of it as a web site management tool.
I'd love to start using it this way. I see many benefits -- for example if a
link on my banner changes, I won't have to go through more than 1,000 pages
to change the link. Or if I decide to move a file or image to another folder
that links to that file will automatically be changed.

The folder on our hard drive that contains "all" of our web site has about
12,000 files. The folder on the web server has more than 16,000 files.
Obviously, something is amiss. This is another reason I'd like to use
Frontpage's site management tools...to clean it up.

So finally to my question -- what is the best way to get this all cleaned up
and start using Frontpage to "manage" this site. I won't be able to use
Frontpage to "publish" because the server doesn't have Extensions, instead I
use an FTP software to transfer the files.

I was thinking something along the lines of downloading everything from the
web server (which might take a day or two) and then using Frontpage to "Open
Web" the recently downloaded folder and starting from there....

Any tips or suggestions?

Thanks in advance.
Matthew Schwarz

 

[Trevor Lawrence]

Greetings from Japan,

Return greetings from Australia - only a few hours time difference

So finally to my question -- what is the best way to get this all cleaned
up
and start using Frontpage to "manage" this site. I won't be able to use
Frontpage to "publish" because the server doesn't have Extensions, instead
I
use an FTP software to transfer the files.

This latter statement is not true. FP is quite OK to publish to a server
without extensions. I know this since the only site I used to have was that
provided by my ISP. This is very basic and certainly has no FP extensions.
FP is quite good at publishing to this server.

What is true is the reverse. You should not publish to a server which has FP
extensions, using FTP. Although even this is not entirely true, either If
you only want to change one or two files (e.g. images), FTP is OK - you just
have to know what you are doing. Don't touch the _* folders. (This won't
bother you.)

I was thinking something along the lines of downloading everything from
the
web server (which might take a day or two) and then using Frontpage to
"Open
Web" the recently downloaded folder and starting from there....

This sounds like a good start. Of course, don't overwrite your old stuff on
the hard rdive, UNTIL you know the site is as you want it. There may be
something that you want/need

Then the fun starts. Comparing the "new" downlaoded site with the "old" hard
drive copy.

Good luck

 

[Matthew Schwarz]

Trevor,
Thanks for the info. Any suggestions on what to do once the files are
downloaded and I open them up? Maybe using reports to go through all the
"unlinked files," "broken hyperlinks" and such?

Matt

 

[Trevor Lawrence]

Trevor,
Thanks for the info. Any suggestions on what to do once the files are
downloaded and I open them up? Maybe using reports to go through all the
"unlinked files," "broken hyperlinks" and such?

Yes, that sounds good. If FP will find any problems, then great.

But if I were in your position, I would actually go through all the links
and see whether they all work or not. Maybe this is because I prefer a
"hands-on " approach, i.e. "If it works, use it". Of course, if any doesn't
work, then I would look at what it is trying to execute and check whether
there is an error in a filename or whether there may be an attempt to
reference something that never existed (or at least doesn't exist now).

I have never worked on a site as large as this appears to be, so my ideas
may be way off.

Let's hope that some others can also throw in some ideas

 

[molly]

my advice....make a backup copy of your website.

 

[molly]

Don't feel bad about not knowing FP. I learned FP from scratch. When I took
over the web site for the business I work for, it was a mess too. I just
basically ran through the site to see what was there, etc. Things I didn't
like, I changed or deleted completely. In the end, I basically re-created
from scratch. By the time you get done with the website you managed to
acquire, believe me you will know FP. I also use FTP to upload my site to
a server that host the website. Good Luck!!