Re: Updating a published website

Dear David,
Seems that my posts are not going through.
My site is www.siyayasa.com and is 310 pages.
Its a travel website that covers South Africa and the nine provinces with
interactive maps. Managing about 600 links is going to be a challenge but I
will try and break my site up into sections. Thanks for the advice and take a
look at my site and please let me know what you think.

"DavidF" wrote:

Sure, I would love to see a 230 page Publisher built site!

I am not an IT specialist either...I just like the challenge of using
Publisher to build websites. I also started with Publisher because I already
knew how to use the program and wanted to easily integrate a website with my
print formatted marketing materials, themes and brands.

After my site grew and started becoming cumbersome, I took the time to break
it up into sections, and organized it such that it is fairly easy to manage.
In fact, this is probably the reason I have not been forced to move to
something else. Probably 80% of my site is static, and the 20% that isn't is
produced with multiple Publisher files. This is the only way in my opinion
if you are going to keep using Publisher. Also, at some point if you do have
your site broken up into sections, and then want to move to a different
program, you can rebuild one section at a time, and link it to the existing
parts. The same logic goes the other direction. Study your site and think
about how you could break it up into sections, and sketch out a site plan.
Then you can rebuild a section at a time, and delete the old pages, and
integrate it with the rest.

If we can make further suggestions, please ask.

DavidF

"Christiaan" <Christiaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9C16ADC1-8FE7-48E5-9C48-E3AE5D527BA3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dear David,
Thanks for your reply.
Usually when I spend time on a programme I manage to figure it out but
when
I couldnt figure this one out I knew that something else had to be done.
My
site is already in full swing and I do not have the programming skills to
use
another programme so that will not be an option right now. I did use your
blog link that you provided and I would probably make use of the
information
provided. Unfortunately I am not an IT specialist so I have made the
simple
mistake of using the wrong program. Let me know if you are interested in
viewing my site.

"DavidF" wrote:

You have run up against one of the limitations of using Publisher to
build
websites, and that is that the larger the site, the harder it is to
manage.
As you are not using HTTP uploading, you cannot use incremental
uploading,
but you want to do minor updates without uploading the whole site each
time.
Your best solution if you want to stay with Publisher is to break your
site
up and produce it with multiple Publisher files...or switch to a
different
program. And, you should use a third party FTP program.

First download and install the free FTP client FileZilla:
http://filezilla-project.org/
With the changes in Vista and IE7, FTP uploading has been changed and
many
of the directions have not reflected these changes. Using FileZila will
be
easier for you. Take the time to also download the excellent
documentation/instructions and read them. The time you invest in learning
how to use FileZilla will pay off in the long run and is really not that
hard.

Then go to "Building a web site with multiple Publisher web publication
files":
http://msmvps.com/blogs/dbartosik/archive/2006/01/16/81264.aspx
In this article David Bartosik describes how to reorganize your site and
produce it with multiple Publisher files. I think the most important
thing
at this point is investing some time thinking about the most logical way
of
organizing your site so that you can successfully link it all together,
and
add sections as needed. David suggests doing this by "renaming" the
index.htm file and thus the supporting subfolder that is produced. I have
my
site broken up and approach it a bit different. I have created multiple
folders on my host to contain the html output from each Publisher file.
Then
I can let Publisher go ahead and use index.htm as the default. I just
include the folder on my site in the path to those pages.

To use David's example of a section called "music", instead of

http://www.yourdomain.com/music.htm
http://www.yourdomain.com/music_files/page001.htm

I would create a folder on my host called "music", and when I "publish to
the web" and produce the html output for that section, I go ahead and let
Publisher name the default "home page" "index.htm", instead of
"music.htm".
Then I upload that page and the index_files folder that is produced, to
my
"music" folder on my host. The links to that section would then be:
http://www.yourdomain.com/music/index.htm
http://www.yourdomain.com/music/index_files/page001.htm
I prefer this approach because it is easier for me to remember the folder
structure I created on my host than to remember what I chose to rename
the
index.htm file and the resulting subfolder, but you may prefer David's
approach.

If you break up your site, you will also probably have to do away with
the
wizard built navigation bars, and build your own. I find it easier to
keep
things straight by writing absolute links instead of relative links, and
it
helps when adding more sections.

Bottom line is that after you break your site up into sections and start
producing it with multiple Publisher files, then when you want to update
just one page, you will only have to update the one section with the page
and not the whole site. You just produce new html files and upload them
to
the proper folder on your site.

Good luck. With a site as large as yours, it is going to take you a while
to
reorganize and redo your site, but in the long run it will be much easier
to
manage, and safer. I would be VERY nervous having one 310 page Publisher
file. I sure hope you are backing everything up! And, while you are at
it,
now is a good time to consider moving to a different program altogether.
Publisher is fine for small static sites, but as you have discovered the
larger and more dynamic the site is, the harder it is to produce and
manage
with Publisher.

DavidF


"Christiaan" <Christiaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:B63F0CAC-7039-48F4-98D8-008E1FFE2AC4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks for the response Don,

Publisher has already saved my site as a filtered .htm file and is
displayed
as a .htm file on the server. My website consists of 310 pages and I am
having difficulty in updating. I only want to update 1 page but
publisher
updates the entire website. The question is: how do I update or replace
for
example page 10 and only page 10?
Page 10 is a file on its own on the server but when I update page 10,
publisher uploads my entire site into that page 10 file.

"Don Schmidt" wrote:

You aren't uploading the .pub file are you? No need to have it on the
server.


--
Don
Vancouver, USA


"Christiaan" <Christiaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5943CC07-DB30-4FA9-864A-C99F0651A0DB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks for the response. I am compressing my images but I use a
background
on
each page. The FTP shortcut in my network places opens when I right
click
and
open but does not want to respond when I double click on it. The
error
message says something about incorrect firewall proxy settings. I
encounter
the same problem even if incremental publish is disabled.

"DavidF" wrote:

It is my understanding that the incremental uploading only works
with
HTTP
uploading, not FTP.

40 megs sounds really large. Are you compressing images before you
upload?

DavidF

"Christiaan" <Christiaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message
news:0B6A8178-4C6D-4803-8733-F9F2A9D79681@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Publisher publishes my entire website of 40mb each time I publish
an
update.
Incremental publishing is enabled. How do I rectify this problem?
I
used
an
FTP path to publish my site.












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