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Preparing a Folder For Your New Website
(Or Preparing a New
Computer for Your Existing Site)
These directions
are for initially setting up a folder for your new
website, or setting up a new or second computer to work
with your site.
If you've already
done all this, but just messed up your local copy so
badly that you need to overwrite it with what's on the
web just to get back to a starting point, then
click
here to jump to those instructions.
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In order to have a
copy of your website on your computer, you first need a
place to put it! So, for demonstration purposes,
we're going to make a folder for "NuclearTestSite.com".
First, open your
"My Documents" folder, then look for a sub-folder under
it titled "My Webs" or "My Web Sites", (depending on the
version of Windows you're running.) Double click
on that folder, and if you already have FrontPage
installed, you'll probably see a couple of files or
folders there already. Go ahead and delete them.
Next, make a new
folder under "My Webs" or "My Web Sites" by
right-clicking anywhere in the white space and selecting
"New / Folder"
Then rename it. You can call the
new folder anything you want, but it's usually less
confusing if you name it the same as your domain name,
but without the .com, .org, etc. I called my
folder "NuclearTestSite"
Now you can close
"My Documents" and open Microsoft's FrontPage.
There will probably be a single page open with a tab
that reads "new_page_1.htm" Just ignore that, and
click on the "File" pull-down menu, and select "New".
(Note: Do NOT use the "new page" button on the tool
bar.... not the same thing.)
When you make your
selection, the "New" task pane will open up on the
right-hand side of your screen. In that, and under
the "New Web Site" heading, we will select "Web Package
Solutions". that will bring up the "Web Site
Templates" dialog box you see below.
Now we need to tell FrontPage where we
want to create our local copy of our website.
Click on the "Browse" button and find the folder we
created in the previous steps under "My Documents / My
Web Sites/ etc. When you select it and click
"Open", you will be returned to this screen and then you
can select "Empty Web Site", as you see above, and click
"OK". You should end up with something that looks
like this:
Note the blue title bar at the top of
the window - it should ALWAYS read something like
"C:\Documents and Settings\etc. after the "Microsoft
FrontPage". It should NEVER read
http://www.yourwebsite.com after it, or you have
opened the copy of your site that's on the web server.
If you make changes that way, you HAVE NO BACKUP COPY!
So do be careful about that.
Now we're ready to log onto your new web
site on the internet. Go to the "File" pull-down
menu, and select "Publish Site". That will bring
up the "Remote Web Site Properties" box. The only
thing you need to do here is to fill in the text box in
the middle with the FULL web address of your site,
(which includes the "http://", as well as the
www.yoursite.com).
When you're done, click "OK". You
will be prompted for your username and password for your
site, and once you've entered them you'll be in a 2
window view, (as below), with both sides having some
amount of files or folders in them.
The left window is the folder we created
on your local computer, (note the "C:\Documents and
Settings\etc. at the top of it, and the
"http://www.yourwebsite.com at the top of the right
window).
If this is your brand new web site, then
you are done. The files you see in the right
window are just the files used by the Bqik "Under
Construction" page you currently see on your site on the
internet. You could even delete
them if you want, but most people leave them there until
they have content of their own with which to replace
them.
New/Second Computer, or
Overwriting a Messed Up Local Copy
If you are setting up a new or second
computer to work with your existing web site however,
you'll see a lot more files in the right window.
And all you need to do is to "publish backwards" to get
those files onto you local computer so you can work with
them properly.
In the lower right-hand corner of the
above screen-capture, notice the three radio buttons
above the "Publish Web Site" button. Usually the
"Local to Remote" radio button is the one you want, and
is the default. But this time, we want to bring
what's on the web down to our local computer, so select
the middle button, "Remote to Local", and go ahead and
hit the "Publish Web Site" button. A progress bar
will appear and as soon as it goes away, you're finished
and ready to go to work on this new or second computer.
AS SOON AS YOU'RE DONE, CHANGE THAT
RADIO BUTTON BACK TO "LOCAL TO REMOTE"!
If, however, what we're doing here is
trying to overwrite our local copy with what's already
on the web for one reason or another, be advised that
you will probably be prompted that some files are in
conflict, (meaning they don't match), and you'll want to
select the "Overwrite ....." option, not the "Ignore
....". And again,
AS SOON AS YOU'RE DONE, CHANGE THAT
RADIO BUTTON BACK TO "LOCAL TO REMOTE"!
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