Setting up distributed Web sites

If you plan to distribute your Web site across several servers (subsites), you can nevertheless develop and test the site on your local file system. To do this, you need to set up the distributed site with mappings between local addresses and server addresses.

To set up a Web site distributed among several servers:

1 Create a separate site document for each server.

2 Rename the home page from each subsite (from index.html) except for the one that will be the entry point to the distributed site. This avoids duplicate filenames.

3 Add pages and hyperlinks for all the subsites, hyperlinking between subsites as you would if you were hyperlinking to another local site. For example, a hyperlink from a page in the Soccer subsite to the Putters.html page in the Golf subsite might be addressed file:///path/Golf/Putters.html. Hyperlinks between subsites can use either relative addressing or full paths.

4 Make the site window containing the site document with the index.html home page active.

5 Click the Site Settings button () on the toolbar, or choose Site > Settings.

6 Click URLMappings in the left pane.

7 Click New.

8 Choose Root of this Site from Map Local Folder or Remote Server on the menu. This puts the path to the root folder corresponding to the current site document in the text box. When you provide an external link to an address on the server in the next step, you will probably be able to preserve some of this path.

9 Edit the path so it contains the URL to the location this root folder will have on the server.

Note: You can also use URLMappings to map a local folder. You would do this if you wanted to conceal your site's folder hierarchy.

10 Choose Root of this Site from Local Server on the menu. This maps the current location of the root folder to its future location on the server.

11 Save the site document.

12 Repeat steps 4 through 11 for each of the site documents you renamed in step 2.

Important: If you plan to use the Clear Site command with any of the subsites you have created, first deselect Add Used Files and Add Used External References in the Clear Site Options dialog box. Otherwise, using the command will destroy the structure of the distributed site.

To test a distributed site in a Web browser before uploading it:

1 View a page in any of the root folders that contains a hyperlink referencing a page in another root folder.

2 Move the cursor over the hyperlink. It should contain the local path to the page.

3 Repeat these steps for every hyperlink referencing a page in another root folder in any of the root folders.

Publishing Web Sites > Adapting sites to special server conditions > Setting up distributed Web sites