Web services on Microsoft Internet Information Server 5.0

Authoring and Uploading Your Virtual Website

This section will explain the different ways a website can be authored and uploaded. It will also explain what default documents the web server will look for when displaying your website.

Server Default Documents

The default document is the page that the web server automatically loads when you access your website. For example, if the website URL was www.yourwebsite.com, and the file “index.htm” is present when the URL www.yourwebsite.com was entered into a browser, the web server will automatically serve the following URL www.yourwebsite.com/index.htm. If no default document is present then no page will be displayed.

Documents for each folder on your website are served up in the following order

1. index.htm
2. default.htm
3. default.asp

It should also be noted that if both index.htm and default.htm is present only index.htm would be displayed.

Uploading Your Website

Currently the following methods are available to author and upload your website.

• FTP
• Author live using MS FrontPage
• Publish With MS FrontPage via FTP or HTTP
• Publish With Dreamweaver Interdev 4.0 / MX (via FTP)

Uploading a website via FTP

An easy way one can upload your website content to the Virtual server directory is via FTP. To connect to the FTP server one will need an FTP client program and a connection to the Internet. There are many free open source or shareware FTP client programs available on the Internet.

The FTP client will need the following information:

• Username and Password this is located on your Customer Configuration form, which is given to you on the activation of your website
• FTP Server Host Name – this can either be in the form of the FTP server IP address, which is 210.50.7.2 or your domain name – Eg ftp.youdomain.com

Once the client program has been set to use the correct information, one will then be able to upload to the Virtual Website directory. It is important that you place the default document in the root directory or it will not be visible to the website.

If using MS FrontPage server components (e.g. Hit counters, Submit Forms) on your website, it is necessary to author the site live or publish it with MS FrontPage in order for the components to work correctly. These components will not work if uploaded with a normal FTP client.

Author Live Using MS FRONTPAGE 2000/XP

To use this method first make sure you have a valid Internet connection. Then open MS FrontPage and select “Open Web” from the File menu as shown.

Then enter the URL to your website where it says “Folder Name”. For this example we are using http://corptest.au.primusdc.net.

One will then be prompted for a username and password. Enter the username and password that was assigned for MS FrontPage as supplied on the Customer Configuration sheet.

One should now be able to author the site live on the web servers. A screen similar to the one below with the folder structure of the site on the left hand side should be visible. If the folder structure is not visible it probably means that authentication has failed or the views are set differently in FrontPage.

Publish with MS FrontPage using FTP or HTTP

One can also author a website locally on a workstation, and then upload it to the Virtual Website using the MS FrontPage Publish Web... command. This can be done either using the HTTP or FTP protocol. When the site is ready to be uploaded one selects the Publish Web... command from the file menu as shown.

This will bring up the following dialog asking for the location to publish your web site. Specify either the FTP or HTTP address i.e. to publish your web using HTTP, specify the URL to your website where it says, “specify the location to publish your web to”.

Eg ftp://ftp.corptest.au.primusdc.net or http://corptest.au.primusdc.net

When one clicks on the Publish button FrontPage will prompt for a password as follows.

Make sure that if publishing via HTTP that one uses the FrontPage username and password. If using FTP then use the ftp username and password. After clicking on ok FrontPage should start uploading your website.

Publish With Dreamweaver Interdev MX

In this example it is assumed that your website was created locally and only needs to be uploaded via Dreamweaver MX. The first step is to Open Dreamweaver and select the “New Site” option as shown.

This will display the following dialog.

Then enter a meaningful site name and then select “next".

One can then select to include server technologies such as ASP and VB scripts as shown above (this is optional) and then select “next".

A dialog will be displayed on how you want to work with your files during development. This is really personal choice but it is suggested that the “Edit locally then upload to remote testing server” option is selected. For this option, you will need to select a path to store the website files on your computer. In this case "E:\Unnamed Site 1" is used. Then click on “Next”.

You will then be asked how to connect to your testing server. Select “FTP”. After FTP is selected more configuration items will then become visible as shown. Then fill in the following items:

• Hostname: This is the name of the FTP server. It can either be in the format of ftp.yourdomainname.com or the IP address of 210.50.7.2 if you domain name hasn’t been delegated yet.
• Folder: Typically, you will want to upload your files to the root directory of your website, so leave this blank.
• FTP login: Use your FTP username that has been assigned to you. Eg author@yourdomainname.com. You can find this on the Customer Configuration Sheet.
• FTP Password: This will be on the Customer Configuration Sheet. You can also tick the box that says “Save Password” to save you from entering your password every time you want to upload something to your website via Dreamweaver.

Test the connection by clicking the “Test Connection” button. If all the above information is entered correctly then no error message will be displayed otherwise check all of your settings again and also check that your connection to the Internet is active. After the connection has been tested successfully click “Next”.

Then enter the URL for the website – eg http://corptest.au.primusdc.net and click the “Test URL”. A message “The URL Prefix Test Was Successful” will be displayed. Then select “Next”. If the test failed, check that correct URL was entered and that the connection to the Internet is active.

The next dialog asks if “check in” and “check out” should be enabled. This can be useful if multiple people are authoring the site at the same time but for our example, the “No, do not enable check in and check out” is selected. Then click “next".

A summary page of your new site definition will then de displayed as shown. Select "Done" to complete the site definition. This will allow Dreamweaver to directly upload and download files to and from the site.