need some quick advice

[Matthew]

I need to send someone an email with directions on how to open a "live"
website and publish to a local version in FrontPage 2002. But this
person is severely
computer illiterate, and they barely know how to even operate FrontPage.
Basically this person has a local site that they make basic changes to
and then publish to their server. Well they've messed up the layout and
have no idea how to correct it so I'm going to go in live to make the
changes and then have them publish from the server to their local site.
But they're using 2002 and I only have access to 2000 so I was wondering
if some kind person could look at my directions and make any necessary
changes so that they would make sense to someone on FP2002.


1. First go to File>Open Web and in the window that pops up, left
click once on the tab that says Web Folders. Then in the space below
type in http://www.myweb.com and then left click once on the open
button. Then just enter your user name and password, hit enter and wait
for the site to load.

(Or... just have them open the site in internet explorer and then just
hit the edit button)

2. Not go to File>Publish Web and in the window that pops up click
browse then in the new window that pops up left click once on the My
Documents tab. Now in the middle of this new window find the folder
titled My Webs and double click on it. Then find the folder that your
website is in and left click once on it and then hit the open button.

3. Now the window should say that it's publishing to
file:///C:/MyDocuments/MyWebs/MyWebsite then just hit the publish
button.

 

[chris leeds]

I just posted fairly straight forward advice on how to do just this. feel
free to cut and paste.

 

[Matthew]

Thanks! I just have to keep things as simple as possible so there's no
room for confusion. And I was worried that the interface would be
slightly different between her FP2002 and my FP2k

 

[Matthew]

thanks... I tried it but they still got confused and since the interface
is apparently different that 200 I'm not sure what to tell her to do.

 

[chris leeds]

there's only one way really, many variations though. ;-)
have her do this, and if she can't you'll have to burn it and mail her the
disk:

1. create a folder somewhere on her computer to receive the web.
in FrontPage:
1. file/ open web, type in the http://addressofheronlineweb/
2. file/ publish web, in the publish web dialog box have her browse to and
select her newly created folder.
3. file/ close web (to close the online web)
4. file/ open web and browse to the folder she just published down to. the
one she made in step one.

given that she can't do this, do you really want her editing and updating
her own site?

HTH

 

[Matthew]

given that she can't do this, do you really want her editing and updating
her own site?

HTH

Thanks I'll try this set and hopefully she'll get it.

The scary thing is that she's been working with FrontPage for almost 2 years
and still can't do the simplist of things. I did a quick redesign of her
site and had to make her a 6 page set of instructions in the most simplistic
of terms (with screen caps that I edited in Photoshop to put in arrows and
comments) just so she would know how to continue to edit her site. Then we
went over everything on two seperate occasions for several hours (and each
time she told me she completely understood)... and she still has problems
with her site.

 

[chris leeds]

you ought to either charge her a hell of a lot of money or look into
something she can edit without any software.
I have used something from www.cmsimple.dk
the guy who wrote it rubbed me wrong a little but it's a well written app.
I used it here: http://leighton-smith.com/
and here: http://songexpert.com/
it's cool because they can edit it with internet explorer through an
administration panel.
Wish is was in .asp/ vbscript instead of php

 

[Kevin Spencer]

When I was in independent contrator, I made sure my contract had a clause
that if the client made any changes to the site, I was not responsible for
maintaining any pages that the client altered.

--
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
..Net Developer
Microsoft MVP
Big things are made up
of lots of little things.

 

[chris leeds]

that's probably one of the best tips that's come across the board in a
while. (from my perspective).

anyone else who liked that tip would probably also be interested in this:
http://nolo.com

 

[Matthew]

When I was in independent contrator, I made sure my contract had a clause
that if the client made any changes to the site, I was not responsible for
maintaining any pages that the client altered.

Well my problem from the start was that this was a verbal contract and a
favor for a mutual friend. I would just go by and do the repair myself
(it took me all of 5 minutes on the live site) but I've moved since
working with this client and it's about a 1 1/2 hour round trip in the
opposite direction of my home. I need to just get out of this one
gracefully... but I don't want to leave them in a bind.