Re: Updating a published website

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First of all I am surprised you aren't using FrontPage to build your site if
you already have it. But to answer your question, Publisher generates its
own unique html code, and it is very hard to edit to much degree, and
Publisher is not a code editor. Plus, remember that just because you edited
the html code doesn't mean that you edited the original Publisher file, so
any edits you make to the code will have to be redone when you change the
Pub file and republish.

As I suggested, if the change you want to make is a small textual change,
then you can frequently just upload the single updated *.htm file. If you
add images, or move your images around a lot, this won't work. Publisher
makes copies of your inserted images in a particular order, and assigns new
file names. If you add an image to a page that is likely to change the order
of the file names, and it won't agree with the code.

Bottom line is updating a large Publisher site such as your's is challenging
because you can't just edit the code the way you can with FrontPage and
other code editors. That is why I like breaking large sites up ;-).

DavidF

"Christiaan" <Christiaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:440AFDC0-52D0-4DFC-B2E7-9142362576DA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
David,
I actually do have another question.
I stumbled upon a programme called Ipswitch WS_FTP Professional 2006.
It seems to me that this programme is going to allow me to edit a page in
my
server. I opened the files on my server through this programme and it
provides an edit function. For example, I clicked on my About us page and
then I clicked the edit button. The programme opened my About us page with
Frontpage thus allowing me to edit the page. I am sure that I can change
the
editing programme to publisher. Does this make sense to you and is it even
possible to edit a single publisher built page on a server using
publisher.
Frontpage does not display the page corectly.

"DavidF" wrote:

You are welcome. I can see why it took 4 months, and I will probably
include
your site as a good example of what can be done with Publisher in the
future
when someone says you can't, shouldn't build a site with Publisher. It
shows
how it is not so much the tool as it is the person who wields the tool.

I suspect that you did use the compress graphics feature to reduce your
overall file size? Be aware that if you only change some text on a page,
you
can upload just that page and not worry about the images etc. I
frequently
do that if I notice a typo, or just change the text a bit, and don't add
any
images or move the images much.

I see your site just fine with FireFox, but I would recommend that you
download and install FF yourself. It is a small download, and you can
open
your .htm files directly from your computer to test. Then you can see for
yourself. The view of your site is not quite as good as in IE, but
generally
I think it looks ok, so I don't know what is the issue with your friends.
When you install FF, just make sure you don't let it become the
default...although you might find you like it better than IE eventually.

I think it is smart to experiment a bit before embarking on a total
reorganization. I suggested just one way to reorganize your site, and
there
are others. For example, you might want the home page to be by itself,
and
each main section including the map being built by a different pub file.
The
main thing is as you realize, is to make sure the navigation system is
easy
to follow and that your organization is such that it is easy for you to
update and manage without going back and changing a lot of other pages. I
am
confident with the care and diligence you have already demonstrated you
will
come up with a plan that works for you.

Good luck on the mobile device sites...that is way beyond my experience,
and
honestly is nothing I care to even learn. About the time that you start
implementing that type of thing, you will probably need to shift to some
other program...but then again, like I said, I know little to nothing
about
it.

DavidF

"Christiaan" <Christiaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:829279CC-FAF5-400D-B157-DF075A9270E1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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.


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