About publishing

What is publishing?

Before you learn about publishing, it's important to understand what a web site is. A web site is a group of files that are interconnected by hyperlinks that allow you to jump from one page to another, usually by clicking your mouse. While it's possible for a web site to be a single HTML page, a web site usually comprises several pages that can include images, hyperlinks, and more advanced technology like forms and databases.

Publishing a web site generally means copying all of the files that make up a web site to a particular destination. In Microsoft FrontPage, you would typically publish your site when you want to:

Make your site (or new or updated pages on your site) available for public viewing
Normally you create or update pages for your web site in a location (often referred to as a "staging" area) where others cannot find or view the pages with their Web browser. When you are ready to let others view your web site on the World Wide Web or on your company intranet, you would use the FrontPage publishing feature to copy the files to the Web server.
Make a backup of your site
There may be times when you want to make a copy or a backup of your web site and save it to a particular location on a your computer or on a network drive. The publishing feature in FrontPage is a convenient way to make a backup.

By using the FrontPage Publish Web command, you can choose to publish all the files in your web site or only the ones that have been changed. You can also individually choose which files you want to publish.

The Publish Web command also lets you copy a web site or a subweb to either a file system location or a server. When you copy a web site by publishing it, FrontPage maintains all of the hyperlinks, as well as the original web site's theme information, shared borders, and so on.

Notes

If you are authoring your web site directly on the Web server, you can edit your web pages and save them directly to the server without using the Publish Web command. However, this is not the same as publishing your web site.
If your web site contains a SharePoint Team Services document library, interactive list, or survey, you must author your web site directly on a server that is running SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft.

Before publishing your web site

Before you publish your web site, you should make sure it is ready by doing the following:

Check for broken hyperlinks
Verify that the pages look the way you want them to
Preview the web site in a Web browser and navigate through the site
Review the status of your files in Reports view

If you are going to publish your web site to the World Wide Web, you'll need an Internet service provider (ISP), preferably one that has a Web server with the Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions 2002 or SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft installed. You'll also need to know the ISP's Web server location for publishing your web, and your user name and password, if necessary.

How the server extensions affect publishing

There are several benefits to publishing to a Web server that has the Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions 2002 or SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft installed:

Your web site will have the best Microsoft FrontPage functionality when it is published. Without the server extensions, certain features will not work, such as most form handlers, search forms, site maps organized by category, and hit counters.
FrontPage will maintain your files and hyperlinks — each time you publish the web site, FrontPage compares the files on your local computer to the files on the Web server. For example, if you move a file in your local web site, FrontPage will update and correct any hyperlinks to it, and then make the same corrections to the files on the Web server the next time you publish the web site.

If your Web server has the server extensions or SharePoint Team Services installed, FrontPage can publish your web site using HTTP. Otherwise, you can use FrontPage to publish your web site to an FTP server.

Different ways to publish your web site to various locations

You can convert a disk-based web site to a server-based web site by following the procedures for publishing by HTTP (if the Web server you are publishing to has the Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions 2002 installed) or FTP (if the server you are publishing to does not have the extensions installed).

Publishing a web site using HTTP

You can publish your web site using HTTP if the server extensions or SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft are installed on the Web server to which you are publishing.

Publishing a web site using FTP

You can publish your web site to an FTP server if the server extensions or SharePoint Team Services are not installed on the Web server to which you are publishing. You will need to know the FTP server name as well as your user name and password. If you are unsure about your user name, password, or FTP location, contact your Internet service provider (ISP) or web site administrator.

Publishing a web site to a file system

You can publish your web site to a folder on your local file system or to a UNC path. For example, you can make a backup copy of your entire web site by publishing it to a new disk-based location, such as C:\Backup. Publishing a web site rather than just copying files ensures that your web site will maintain its structure, and that the FrontPage components on your web pages will work.