|
Download | Purchase | FAQ | Home |
Step #1 - Operation Step #2 - Images Step #3 - Web Page Step #4 - FTP Step #5 - Finish
Quick Start Guide Detailed Setup Thumbnail Properties WebPage Appearance FTP Settings Program Automation E-mail Settings HTTP Settings Misc Options GPS Setup HTML Properties Miscellaneous HTML
EXIF Editor Batch Processing Rotating Images
Preview Web Pages View Web Pages Sample Web Page Font Properties
RoboPhoto FAQ What's New in v3.0 Screen Shots Advanced Features HTML Template Files Sign Up With Tripod PAD File (htm) PAD File (xml) Legal Info End-User License
System Requirements Demo Limitations Download The Demo Purchase Unlocking The Demo |
 Settings (Uploading Tab)
By default, the program only creates local copies of web pages that can be viewed direct from your computer without having to be connected to the internet. If this is all you want to do, you can ignore everything related to FTP. Some program features, like area maps, require that web pages be uploaded to an FTP server and made available on the web. FTP stands for 'File Transfer Protocol'. FTP programs (like RoboPhoto) allow you to transfer files from your computer to other computers on the internet. To make a web page that can be viewed by anyone on the internet, you need to send the web page to a web server. That requires 2 things: 1) You must have an account with a web hosting provider. The good news is that you can do it for free. Instructions for signing up Tripod, a company that offers free web hosting, can be found here. Instruction for configuring RoboPhoto for other web hosting providers, like GeoCities and Pixiad, can be found in the FAQ. 2) You need to be able to send your web page to the web server. That's where FTP comes into play. So, to create a real web page that you can share with others, all you need to do is sign up with Tripod and then, based on the information that Tripod supplies, configure RoboPhoto to send your web pages to their web server. Note: there are numerous companies that provide free web hosting, but Tripod is the best and most reliable. RoboPhoto will work with any FTP server and you're certainly free to choose your own. The graphic above, as of this writing, shows the required information for a Tripod account with the username 'someuser0'. Except for the username and password, your Tripod information should be identical. FTP Server Name This is the FTP server name. Except for being in dotted notation (like word.word.word), there is no requirement for what it must be. It could be ftp.domain.com, domain.com or something cryptic like brazil.fred.domain.org. The name is simply whatever the web hosting provider chose for it. You can specify an unlimited number of FTP configurations. Back to the top New FTP Server Click the 'New' button to add a new FTP server. When you do that a dialog box will appear prompting you for the FTP server name. The name that you enter should match what is required by the web hosting provider. Back to the top Delete FTP Server Click this button to delete a previously configured FTP server. Back to the top Save FTP Server After you add or change information for a FTP server, click this button to save it. Back to the top FTP Port Enter the FTP port. Unless the FTP server has a proprietary configuration (very rare), it should be 21. Back to the top FTP Username Enter your FTP username into this field. In order to access an FTP server, you must have a username and a password. These are provided by the web hosting provider and are almost always case sensitive. Back to the top FTP Password Enter your FTP password into this field. In order to access an FTP server, you must have a username and password. These are provided by the web hosting provider and are almost always case sensitive. Back to the top Initial Server Directory Enter the initial FTP server directory, relative to the login directory, into this field. Normally, you should not use absolute directory names (those that begin with /). If you don't know what to enter here, ask your web hosting provider, "Relative to my initial FTP login directory, where should I put my HTML documents?". Upon connecting to the FTP server, RoboPhoto changes to the initial server directory and creates new web pages there. For example, assume that the relative initial server directory is www and that you're uploading a web page with the name mywebpage, here's what RoboPhoto will do: 1) Use the FTP server name and FTP server port to establish a connection with the server. If the server name is incorrect or if the server is temporarily down, you'll get an error similar to 'host not found'. If the port is incorrect, you'll get an error similar to 'connection refused' or 'service unavailable. 2) Tell the FTP server your username and password. If either of these are incorrect (or not the proper case), you'll get an error similar to 'login incorrect'. An 'invalid password' message means that either the username or password is incorrect. 3) Change to the initial server directory (www). If the initial server directory doesn't exist, you'll get an error similar to 'the directory does not exist on the server'. 4) Create a new directory with the same as your web page name (mywebpage) under the initial server directory (www). 5) Upload all files associated with the web page into the www/mywebpage/ relative directory. 6) Log off the FTP server Note: You should normally specify directories relative to the initial login directory (like www), not absolute directories (/www), which are relative to the server's root directory. Absolute directories begin with a leading slash (/), relative directories do not. The reason you should always use relative directories is because the initial login directory isn't always the root directory. If you use Tripod, you don't need to worry about this because the initial login directory is the same as initial server directory, i.e. just leave the initial server directory in RoboPhoto blank. Back to the top Parent URL Enter the parent URL for your web pages. Do not include the web page name or any server side directories that you must change to in order to reach your public HTML directory. This is used to load newly created web pages into your browser after uploading, creating area maps, sending e-mail and communicating with server side applications. If, after uploading, you get a message similar to '404 - file not found' it probably means one of 4 things: 1) You entered the wrong URL. For example, you used http://www.tripod.com/username instead of http://members.tripod.com/username. 2) You included the portion of the initial server directory required to reach your public HTML directory. For example, you used http://www.yourdomain.com/www instead of simply http://www.yourdomain.com. 3) You didn't include the portion of the initial server directory after the public HTML directory. For example, you used http://www.yourdomain.com instead of http://www.yourdomain.com/myphotos. 4) You used the entire initial server directory when only a portion of it was required. For example you used http://www.yourdomain.com/www/myphotos instead of http://www.yourdomain.com/myphotos. If, after uploading a web page, you get a message similar to 'forbidden' it means either the URL does not point to a directory accessible to the public or that the directory does not contain a default HTML file like index.html, when one is required by the FTP server. The URL will be used when substituting for the [url] item when sending e-mail or when posting to server side script(s). Back to the top Test Click this button to test the FTP server name, FTP port, username, password and whether the initial server directory exists. This does not confirm that the initial server directory is where your web documents should be located or if the parent URL points to the correct location. Check the former by asking your web hosting provider. Check the later by creating a web page and seeing if it loads without error. Back to the top Upload New Webpages Check this box to upload newly created web pages to the selected FTP server. If unchecked, only a local copy of the web page will be created. Certain program features require that the web page be uploaded to an FTP server. These include sending e-mail, posting to server side scripts and creating GPS area maps. For testing purposes, you can force the FTP to be skipped by specifying the SkipFtp Misc Option. Back to the top Save Click this button to save the current information to rp.ini, which is located in the main RoboPhoto directory. Back to the top Help Click this button to load the help file. You can also press the F1 key anywhere in the program for context sensitive help. Back to the top Close Click this button to close the form. Back to the top |