Re: Updating a published website

Thanks for the great response, I have been working on my site for 4 months. I
will definitely make use of your advice. I will use my "experimental" site
first to break up and as soon as I have mastered the breakup operation, I
will the start with my actual site. I have managed to reduce my site to 19mb
so for now I will keep on publishing the entire site once a week. Some of my
mates has told me that they cannot view my site in Firefox at all but then
others say that it displays fine in firefox. I assume that it has maybe got
something to do with the browser reselution settings on their individual
computers. One of the "punchlines" of my site is to be user friendly. Most
other related websites are easy to navigate in one direction but very
difficult to navigate back to where you started, that is why I've built an
extremely easy to navigate site. I am also intending to build my site si that
it is cellphone accessible. The URL will be www.siyayasa.mobi. I have not
started yet but it will form part of the service that I offer to my clients
and as far as the images go, I wanted to create an African Travel atmosphere.
It seems to be working.

"DavidF" wrote:

WOW! I am thouroughly impressed! You have done an incredible job, and now I
understand why the site is so heavy and has so many pages. It is clean, easy
to read, and easy to navigate, and the images look good. It also seems to
work pretty well in both IE and FF, with one exception that I noticed. The
bottom navbar does not work in FF, which isn't the end of the world, and can
be fixed.

When you use both the side navbar and the bottom navbar in Publisher, for
some reason the bottom navbar is always converted to an image and the links
killed. To fix it, you ungroup the bottom navbar from the navbar wizard and
the side navbar. Select the bottom navbar, Arrange, ungroup. If you do this
and add anything to your main menu, the wizard will not add it to the bottom
navbar, but the bottom navbar will then work in FF. And unfortunately this
has to be done to each page...like I said, perhaps it isn't worth the hassle
of changing all 230 pages...at least not immediately.

I would also see why you are a bit overwhelmed with the idea of breaking it
up. The navigation system and all those links are going to be a bit
challenging. As I said, PLEASE do yourself a favor and make several backups
of your Publisher file.

I think that you already have things organized such that you can start
breaking up the site fairly easily and logically....at least in my mind
<grin>. If I studied it more closely I might suggest something different,
but here is one way.

You currently have your site organized into 12 main sections as per your
navbar. Then when you click on either the map on the home page or one of the
links such as the link to the North West, that takes you to the main page
for the North West Province. From there you click on the links on your map
to individual towns in that Province. And from each town you have links to
Accomodations, Tour Operators, Car Rentals etc.

It seems to me that your 12 main sections and navbar is going to be fairly
static. It also seems to me that it is the individual towns, and the
associated pages and information that is going to change. As you research
different towns, you are probably going to want to add those to your site.
So, I would suggest that each town's pages be added with a new Pub file and
those web pages be uploaded to its own folder on your site. As an example,
let's look at the North West Province.

From your North West Province you have a link on the map to Lichtenburg.
Right now that link is:

http://www.siyayasa.com/index_files/northwestlichtenburg.htm

From the Lickhtenburg page, you link to the Accomodations page etc. If you
were to create a folder on your host called "northwestlichtenburg" or just
"lichtenburg" at the same directory level as you have the current
"index_files" folder. Then in a new Publisher file...perhaps called
lichtenburg.pub you could build the "home page" for Lickhtenburg, or in
other words everything you currently see at
http://www.siyayasa.com/index_files/northwestlichtenburg.htm and the
Accomodations page, the Tour Operators page, etc. Then you would upload
those pages to your new "northwestlichtenburg" folder. Then rewrite the link
on the map to the new folder. This could be:
http://www.siyayasa.com/northwestlichtenburg/northwestlichtenburg.htm or
just use the default index.htm and:
http://www.siyayasa.com/northwestlichtenburg/index.htm

Eventually as you use a new Pub file to build each town's subweb, you can
delete those town pages from your main site, and eventually reduce the main
site produced with your main Pub file down to just the 12 main pages.
Eventually you will get to the point where if you want to add a town, you
will add the link to the main province page in your main site, upload it.
And upload your new town pages to a new folder produced with a new Pub file.
From that point on if you want to edit any particular town, you only need to
make the change in its Pub file, and upload the changes to its folder.

One compliction is that if you want to keep the same basic page "template"
on the city pages, you will need to redo and manually rebuild the main
navbar with absolute links back to those main pages. The same with your
Previous Page links. When you build your city "template" you can copy the
the menu/navbar from your main pages, or build it manually and insert
absolute links back to your main site. Or perhaps instead of having the main
site navbar on each city page, design a different template for each city
without the main menu, and instead create just a link back to the main page,
and perhaps handbuild the textual menu at the bottom with absolute links. Or
perhaps just have a link back to the main province page, and forget about
the side menu...or...or... That is where it gets a bit tricky. You need to
have a city template that is easy to add to your site, and you don't want to
have to go back and change all the city subwebs each time you add a city.
You want to only add a link from the Province map, upload that change, and
upload the new city webpages to a new folder.

I am thinking as I go here, but it occurs to me if you want to keep
everything looking the same, and don't want to create a new page template
for your cities, then I would go to the "home page" of one of your cities in
your current Pub file. Edit > Select All , then Arrange > Group, then back
to Edit > Copy. Then Edit > New blank web page of the same size as your main
site....in other words, create a new Pub file. Then on the new blank page
Edit > Paste Special > Publisher Object. Arrange everything on the page and
ungroup. Now you will notice that your main navbar on the left side is just
a group of text boxes...no more links. Instead of inserting a hyperlink the
normal way, click on the Hot Spot icon on the left of your page, and when
you get the insert hyperlink dialog, use the Existing file or Web page, and
write an absolute link instead of a relative link. In other words, insert
http://www.siyayasa.com/index_files/northwest.htm and move the Hot Spot box
over the words North West in your main menu, and size it so it doesn't
overlap any of the other words. By using the Hot Spot way of hyperlinking,
you won't get the underline that you would if you just inserted the
hyperlink in the normal way, and your main menu will look the same as in
your main webpages. Once you get a hot spot link on each of the 12 main
pages on the menu, you have a template. When you insert a new page for the
Accomodations etc, just duplicate everything on the first page. And go back
to the main file and copy all the content from the Accomodations page for
each city and paste special to the appropriate page. And when you want to
add a new city, just open one of your newly built Pub files for another
city, do a Save As your new city Pub file and change things accordingly.

When you Publish to the Web and produce your new city subwebs, you can just
use the normal index.htm file and index_files folder, and upload those to
the new subfolder on your site.

I am rambling, and should probably go back and rewrite this whole thing.
But...its my supper time, so I will just go ahead and post this. I don't
mean this to be a definitive way of organizing your site anyway...just some
things to think about. You have already demonstrated a remarkable ability to
organize and build your site, so I am sure you will do fine. But if you do
have any questions, post back... or perhaps if Mike sees this, he can offer
some suggestions about how to organize your site. Thanks for letting me see
your site...you should be proud!

DavidF



"Christiaan" <Christiaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:D29F5BCD-D322-4249-842A-A6C1005615F1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Updating a published website
    ... bottom navbar does not work in FF, which isn't the end of the world, and can ... of your Publisher file. ... those web pages be uploaded to its own folder on your site. ... will add the link to the main province page in your main site, upload it. ...
    (microsoft.public.publisher.webdesign)
  • Re: Pages not uploading
    ... vertical navbar back into your design, but it occurs to me that one of your ... off and one day publish it all as a manual for Publisher 2003! ... upload them. ... folder on your C drive where you directed your HTML output when you ...
    (microsoft.public.publisher.webdesign)
  • Re: Pages not uploading
    ... navbar to work in your circumstances...at least a vertical navbar. ... which is the default way Publisher produces a navbar ... folder on your C drive where you directed your HTML output when you ... index.htm file and the index_files folder from your webspace, and upload ...
    (microsoft.public.publisher.webdesign)
  • Re: Pages not uploading
    ... Publisher, and write the links yet once again. ... folder on your C drive where you directed your HTML output when you Publish ... textual navbar, and change each link to reflect the new file names. ... index.htm file and the index_files folder from your webspace, and upload the ...
    (microsoft.public.publisher.webdesign)
  • Re: Website only views in IE
    ... index.htm file and your index_files folder, direct those files to a folder ... Publisher wizard built navbars rendering in IE8, ... fool proof rule for this but it seems that the fancier the border, ... Be sure to compress your images before you upload again. ...
    (microsoft.public.publisher.webdesign)