How to publish from FrontPage to your site

With the web open in FrontPage Explorer, push the button.

If you have not published this web before (or maybe if you have,) you will see the following dialog (your entries will be different from that shown):

You may want to uncheck the box for Publish changed pages only to force the transfer of all files.

To specify a new target location for publishing, click on More Webs. This will get you

Change the location to your GeoCities URL:

Click OK and the Wizard starts. Fill in the FTP Server Name as shown. The Directory Path is blank for the root directory or enter the directory name if transferring to a subdirectory. Do not enter a slash (/) for the root directory.

In the next dialog give your GeoCities User Name and your GeoCities Password.

Here are the instructions from GeoCities:

Using FTP

You will be submitting your files to: ftp://ftp.geocities.com. In the User field, enter your GeoCities Member Name, and in the Password field, enter your GeoCities Password

When you connect to GeoCities, you are already in the correct directory to transfer your files (/pub/homestead. Transfer your files here exactly as you want them named in your directory. Be sure to transfer all non-text files (i.e. GIF, JPG, ZIP, etc.) using the binary or raw data option. HTML and other text files should be transferred using the ASCII (text) option.

Once your files are transferred, you will not see them listed in the directory. This is for security purposes.

Click Finish and the transfer process begins. There is a brief message about Verifying FTP Connection, a wait, and then the Transferring Files progress dialog displays.

When the transfer is complete, there is no notification, just the disappearance of the transfer dialog.

Changing illegal files

GeoCities has a list of permitted File Types (extensions) which you can find on their site at www.geocities.com/main/info/system/filetypes.html. Not included in that list are three types that FrontPage uses and the Web Publishing Wizard wants to transfer: .inf, .utf8, and .elm. These are text files, so you can look at them. There are three solutions:

1. move the files elsewhere whilst publishing
2. rename the files to a legal extension whilst publishing
3. delete them (send them to the recycle bin)

If you do rename them, then remember to change them back (on your local hard disk—you can't do it to the ones on GeoCities) afterwards. If you delete them, restore them afterwards from the recycle bin, although this seems not to be necessary and you can probably leave them deleted. For this site I just deleted them. They seem to be regenerated automatically and I have to delete them again before each upload/publish.

So look for them with Find:

If you change the names, then use a scheme such as changing .inf to .txt and .utf8 to .doc—pick some extension that GeoCities accepts. Remember the scheme so you can change them back later if you wish.

An easier scheme is to move the files to a folder outside the FrontPage Web folders—select all the files with Ctrl-A, then drag and drop with the right mouse button—pick the Move option from the menu that appears when you drop.

If you don't do this, you will receive an error message during file transfer:

The easiest procedure is to just delete them (send them to the recycle bin) and forget about them. Type Ctrl-A to select all the files, then press the Del key (or Right-Click and select Delete from the pop-up menu.)

The best time to delete/change these files is just before you publish. If you forget and the Publish bombs out, you can do a Find at that point and Publish will give you another chance.

The following is from Microsoft:

Using FTP To Copy a FrontPage Web

FrontPage's Publish command uses HTTP to communicate with the Web server. This command will not transfer the local FrontPage Server Extension files to the target server. When using an FTP application, it is important to transfer only the content files from the originating web server. Do not FTP any _vti _* directories. If these directories or files are transferred, they will overwrite the existing files on the target server. FrontPage Server Extensions should only be installed using the FrontPage Server Administrator utility on the host server or remotely using the HTML Administration Forms.

If you FTP the contents of a FrontPage web to a Web server that does not have the FrontPage Server Extensions, some runtime FrontPage functionality such as form handling and searching will be lost.

You might also want to look at the List of Special Files and Directories Maintained by FrontPage

More information from GeoCities can be found at:

GeoCities' notes on FrontPage FTP

Mircosoft FrontPage 98

NOTE: For this program, be sure to put a leading slash ("/") on all file paths. Also, FrontPage 98 creates subdirectories, which allow you to organize your Homestead more easily.

The leading slash seems to be necessary only if you are publishing to a sub-folder rather than to the site root, although I have not verified this. Perhaps they will explain more when they fix the spelling of "Mircosoft."

Monday, 15 March 1999 01:21

Feedback is appreciated.
You can e-mail me at FrontPag@GeoCities.com—make sure that isn't FrontPage but FrontPag; God knows where the former winds up—Rupert Murdoch most likely.

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