DataBox allows you to nominate an area on your disk where your database can be prepared for publication.
In addition, you may want to modify the default publishing styles and backgrounds.
== FTP Settings ==
Select 'Publishing Setup Options' from the 'Publish' menu. Then select 'FTP Web Server Settings'
Here you specify your Internet connection details. It is assumed that you will have a defined network address for your Web Site and have been provided a User ID and Password by your Internet Service provider (ISP). Enter these details in the appropriate boxes as provided to you by your ISP.
(The Port number will also be advised by your ISP, but is nearly always 21.)
For Web developers who have their own FTP Server software, you may use the local address of 127.0.0.1 - provided you have your FTP Server running.
You may also nominate a sub-directory that DataBox will create and change to on your ISP server once connected - before uploading any files. You can only nominate a path containing multiple sub-directories provided the directory already exists on the server. These connection details will only be used when an attempt is made to 'Upload' your files to your Web Server (see the Help section on Publishing).
== General Settings ==
Select 'Publishing Setup Options' from the 'Publish' menu. Then select 'General Publishing Rules'
This form is used to select the style and colour of your published database - with some default coloured pattern image files provided by SimpleWebFX.
For those more experienced with Row and Column alignment, there are options to specify the cell alignments for your published data in Detail and QuickView pages.
Page background:
Firstly, you can nominate the background colour (or specify a background image file) for the Web Page that your database table(s) will be published on. If you select, the Image option from the pull-down list, you will be expected to enter a valid Image file for your page background.
Table heading:
You may specify either a Heading for your published database (with a user nominated font, style, size and colour) - which will appear at the top of each record, or you may specify an Image file that contains your heading.
Table background:
You may specify a colour or an Image file for the background of the table used to display each detail page, the QuickView screen and the Category summary pages. If you specify "None" here, then the table background will default to the page background image or colour as specified above. The table is considered to be in transparent mode when "None" is selected.
C1 and C2 offer two alternating colour settings for the rows in the published data. The QuickView and DetailView pages present their data in rows. C1 can define the colour of the first data row, C2 the second, C1 the third and so on.
NOTE: Different browsers behave differently when attempting to use C1 and C2 for alternating table row colours when a background colour or image has been specified for the page. Similarly, specifying a table background or image may affect the use of C1 and C2 in the same way.
You can experiment with C1 and C2 and the page/table backgrounds until to achieve the desired effect.
You can force DataBox to republish all of your pages each time you click the Publish button. You can check the box here to allow DataBox to only republish modified records. This is a useful feature if your database is particularly large.
You can specify the width in pixels of the 'table' used to publish your results. This setting can be made for the Main detail pages and the QuickView pages (For the search results page width see the 'Search Engine' help topic).
You can define the percentage width that each column in the table should occupy. For the main detail page of DataBox published results are divided into the LABEL column, the DATA column and the IMAGE column. Set these widths to satisfy your own requirements.
Similarly, the QuickView results page can have each column set to a percentage of the table width. This will allow wider columns to be defined to avoid unnecessary wrapping of your data.
Some Instructions are automatically included in your published database - The font, size, style and colour of these instructions can be set here. (Note, the font details of the descriptive labels, the data fields and the scroll-box can be set independently on the Main DataBox form).
You must specify a directory where your published database files will be prepared. When first installed, DataBox will have a directory named 'Publish' under the installation directory. Each time you click the 'Publish' button, previously published files beginning "sfx" will be removed from this directory before being re-created based on the current database.
If you plan on maintaining multiple databases, you must create separate publish directories for each and identify them separately with this form having loaded each database in turn (remember to save your changes for each database).
DataBox will create sub-directories within this directory to handle Uploading your published database files. You can optionally copy additional Web Site files into the publish directory if you would like DataBox to include these in managing the uploading of your site (recognising only those files that have changed since the last upload). Provided your files do not begin "sfx", DataBox will not remove them from the publish directory each time 'Publish' is clicked.
You may also identify whether any images in your database are to be published to "scale" such that each image occupies the same physical box size in each published record, or, whether the images should be published in their original size without any scaling. Please check your published results for both options to determine which mode is better for your images.
Finally, you can nominate which of the 20 fields in your database should be used to create the QuickView summary screen. Specify each field number in any order, each separated by a comma (no spaces).
Eg.
1,2,3,4,5
20,5,4,2
etc.
== Logical Image Links ==
The "Link Images only at upload time" checkbox instructs DataBox not to copy any image files used in your database into the "Upload" directory. This improves publishing time as a "logical link" of the image file is copied instead saving the need to copy the image files from their original location. At upload time, the FTP upload manager will use the logical link information to transfer the file from its original location.
Using this option does mean that locally viewed published pages will not find the image files correctly. This will only occur when viewing the published pages locally from the Upload directory.
== HTML Override ==
DataBox will allow you to specify your own HTML code for the published pages.
Select 'Publishing Setup Options' from the 'Publish' menu. Then select HTML Headers and Footers'.
The HTML form will allow you to add your own HTML to the head and tail of the main Index page, the Detail/Quick/Search view pages and the tables held within the Detail/Quick/Search View pages.
To experiment with these settings, click the 'Example' button for each window and check the override box. Republish your database and check the results. You can then experiment with the HTML to achieve your customised pages.
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For further help, please view the appropriate sections.
If there are any areas not covered sufficiently, or you have comments, please e-mail to documentation@simplewebfx.com.
