Publishing a Web Using FTP or FrontPage

General Background. Up to now we have been guiding you to develop webs purely on your own computers.  But ultimately, the goal of developing a web is to be able to get it out in front of other people, whether for personal pleasure, business or whatever.  This is done by copying your web to a web server where it becomes available to others via the WWW.

When working with FrontPage there are two major ways to "publish" a web to a server.

  1. Using FrontPage and the FrontPage Server Extensions.

  2. Using some FTP program such as CuteFTP

 

Using FrontPage and the Server Extensions.  If your server has the FrontPage extensions on it then you can use this approach.  If you use an Internet Service Provider (ISP) you are usually required to pay for some extra storage space in order to use these extensions.  They are almost always worth the minimal added expense.

In order to use the Publish Web option in FrontPage you need to

  1. Save your most recent changes and close open pages.
  2. Click on the File menu
  3. Select the Publish Web item

You should then see the following dialogue window/form.  I have expanded it slightly using the Options command button.

 

 

  1. You need to select or type in the URL of your web on the server.  
  2. I select the Publish changed pages only option button for obvious reasons.  There are other options that are fairly self-explanatory.  
  3. Then you should press the Publish command button and your most recent changes will be added to your current web on the server.  
  4. You are likely to be asked to provide a username and password at some point in this process.

This is a very convenient approach that helps you maintain your web.

 

Using the File Transfer Protocol. FTP is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol.  This can be very useful in several settings.  You are almost surely going to have to select the files to be uploaded to the server yourself.  But the user-interface is likely to give you a lot more satisfying information about what is going on.  This can be very useful when you aren't quite sure about things such as paths to your files or directories on the server.

I use CuteFTP.  It is a very inexpensive FTP program sold by GlobalScape.   It is also quite nice.