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Overview
Both Preview Site and Publish Site generate HTML files for the website.
What is the practical difference between Preview Site and Publish Site? Some assets in the HTML pages generated by Preview Site do not work, i.e. timed images and Java objects. Moreover, Preview Site generates pages for the entire site. One advantage to using Preview Site is that you will never accidentally change the public pages for the website. Previewing is also considerably less complicated.
Publish Site allows you to specify where you want the HTML pages created, i.e. on your local drive or on a remote server. All assets should work in the generated pages, and you can choose to generate all or just a part of the website. Publish Site gives you greater control, but it’s more work and you have to be careful about the location at which you publish. Publishing to your local drive is pretty much equivalent to previewing.
After editing the website, you should always preview or publish the site to your local drive, then review the changes that you have made. Continue editing the site, previewing/publishing locally, and reviewing until you are happy with the changes that you have made. Only then should you publish the website to the remote server to make the site public. It might be helpful to review the flowchart from General Procedures.
With the exception of publishing remotely, you don’t have to go to Publish View to preview or publish. You can perform these actions while in Site View or Page View as well.
Before you can publish remotely to ARDA’s UNIX webspace, you will have to have write permission to that space. Request this permisssion from ARDA system admin Tom Knight.
Publish View
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Button
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Description
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 Preview Site
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See how the website would look in a browser (some assets disabled)
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 Publish Settings
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Select and edit where publish will save the created HTML pages
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 Publish Site
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Create HTML pages for all or part of the website at the location that you specify
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Previewing
- In either Site View, Page View, or Publish View, click on the Preview Site button.
- HTML files will be generated in the Preview folder in your working folder, and the site will appear in a web browser.
Adding and Removing Profiles (advanced)
Profiles are used by the publish tool to specify where to publish HTML files. To publish to a custom location, you will have to add a profile. However, since profiles are saved to the ARDA Website Template file, please manually remove such profiles before you end your NetObjects session. Otherwise, other users will be able to see and use these custom profiles. Also, please do not remove the profiles“Local Publish” or “Remote Publish.”
- In either Site View, Page View, or Publish View, click on the Publish Site button.
- Click on the little pencil button in the Publish Site dialogue box.
- The next Publish Settings dialogue box displays the details of the profile specified in the top dropdown. Click on “New Profile...” below the dropdown.
- The following New Publish Profile dialogue box asks you to choose the profile type; pick “Local” if you are publishing to your local drive, “Remote” if you are publishing to a server. Click “OK.”
- If you selected “Local,” a Publish Settings dialogue box will appear similar to the one in Step 3. Specify the Directory path as desired.
- If you selected “Remote,” a Publish Settings dialogue box similar to the one below will appear. Add the relavent information, then click “OK.”
- To remove a profile, follow steps 1-3, but click “Remove profile...” at the end of step 3 with the appropriate profile selected in the dropdown.
Publishing Locally
Do this frequently to check your work.
- In either Site View, Page View, or Publish View, click on the Publish Site button.
- In the dialogue box, select where you want to publish in the first dropdown, under “Save Location.” Select the profile called “Local Publish.” This should specify the publish location C:\ARDA Website on your local drive; you can click on the little pencil next to the dropdown to check.
- If you don’t want to publish to “Local Publish,” you can add a new profile and publish to a location of your choosing. See Adding and Removing Profiles above. Please remember to remove the custom profile before exiting NetOBjects.
- Leave “Publish changed assets only” unchecked. Click on the “Publish” button. The site will be converted to HTML, and you can review it in the web browser that pops up.
Publishing Remotely
Only do this when you are sure of your changes. Following these steps will replace ARDA’s public website with yours. VERY IMPORTANT: until the site finishes transferring, do not do anything with your computer, such as launch or switch to another application! Otherwise, NetObjects will crash.
- Publish locally. Be sure to note what profile you used to publish locally, e.g. “Local Publish.”
- Go to Publish View.
- On the menubar, select Publish->Arange Files and be sure that “by Asset Type” is selected.
- Select Publish->Transfer Files to Server...
- The Transfer Files dialogue box will appear. Use the top dropdown to select the profile to which you published locally in step 1.
- Choose “Remote Publish” in the bottom dropdown, then click the small pencil button next to that dropdown.
- In the “Publish Settings” dialogue box, the FTP Host and the Directory fields should appear as above. If the User Name and Password fields are not empty, clear them, then enter your UNIX username and password. Click OK in the “Publish Settings” box, then OK again in the “Transfer Files” box. The site will then transfer. This should take a couple minutes.
- Repeat steps 2-5. Then, in the “Publish Settings” box, clear the User Name and Password fields before clicking OK. Finally, press “Cancel” in the “Transfer Files” box.
NOTE: if you are remotely publishing this directions site, the path is /afs/slac/www/grp/ara/directions
Next topic: Personal Pages
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