Spider Writer is very project-oriented because Spider Writer projects provide an easy method to maintain and manage a large amount of web documents. Read this topic to learn more about how you can become more productive with Spider Writer projects.
Projects require that all documents contained within the project file list (all files in the project) are contained within the directory structure containing the project file. For example, if your project file PROJECT.SWP is located in C:\Projects\, then all files in the project must be located in the C:\Projects\ directory or one of its subdirectories. Spider Writer stores project files with relative paths so you can move the project file structure to different locations on your hard drive using Windows Explorer without breaking project functionality.
New projects can be created from the New Project Wizard, found on the Environment menu. This wizard guides you through the process of creating a project from scratch or from an existing directory structure. See the New Project Wizard topic for more help on creating Spider Writer projects.
There are two methods for adding and removing files from a project. The first is to use the Synchronization Wizard, found on the Environment menu. This wizard finds files in the project file list which no longer exist on the local hard drive and files in the project's directory structure that don't appear in the project file list. The second method for adding and removing files is to use the Environment sidebar in the Document Source view.
You can open projects from the Environment menu. Once open, they appear in the Environment sidebar. Spider Writer automatically reopens the projects you left open when you last closed Spider Writer. To open a project file for editing, click on the project folder that contains it in the Environment sidebar. It should appear in the file list in the bottom of the sidebar. Double click on the file to open it.
To publish a project to a remote server on the web or to a local directory structure, use the Publish Wizard from the Environment menu.
The Spider Writer publishing tag is used to help make maintaining large websites easier via publishing with projects. While publishing your web files, Spider Writer looks for the SW tag in each one. If found, Spider Writer performs a specified action. If the CONTENT attribute of the SW tag is set to "datetime", the published file will replace the SW tag with the current date/time stamp. On the other hand, if the CONTENT attribute of the SW tag is set to "insertfile", Spider Writer will insert the contents of a file specified by the FILE attribute. This feature is invaluable for sites with pages containing common elements, such as menus, headers, or footers. Simply create a separate file for the common element and include it with the SW tag. Files can be specified using a fully-qualified path or relative to the current document.
To insert a Spider Writer Publishing Tag, edit your document in Document Source view and click on either the Publish Date/Time Stamp or Publish File Insert commands from the Insert menu. Spider Writer tags can be edited with the Attributes sidebar as well.