Uploading Gremlins and How to Tame Them
The process of uploading is relatively simple. First you go to the WebSite menu and choose Save Website To Internet. This builds your website and stores it in a folder on your computer. You next see the Site Info dialog, click its Upload button. This will bring up the WebStudio Publisher Wizard. The wizard needs the FTP address, username and password to your hosting account. Armed with that information, it should be a simple matter to upload your site. But many times, it isn't quite that easy.
If you have a problem, the first thing to check is your firewall. The firewall is designed to keep your computer from connecting to the Internet, and to keep computers on the Internet from connecting to yours. This seems counter-intuitive if our goal is to upload to the net, but the bad-guys of the Internet are forcing us to "lock-down" our machines to keep them out. So, the firewall is a good thing! Knowing how to tell your firewall to allow programs Internet access is also a good thing. We can't tell you how to do this in a specific way since there are so many different firewalls out there. However, every single one of them will have a way to allow you to give Web Studio FULL ACCESS to the Internet. Just go to the Help menu or the site of the firewall publisher and find out how. Don't just shut the firewall down, many times it won't shut down and you'll still have your problem. Find out how to give your prized programs access to the net and you'll be happy.
Microsoft added a firewall to Windows with Windows XP Service Pack 2. It is turned on by default and won't let Web Studio have access to the net. Go to the Start menu in Windows, click on Help and search for Firewall for instructions.
The second trouble area is the Internet connection. If your using a dialup or DSL you may not have configured your connection properly.
First, if you have a dialup make sure you are connected to the Internet via Internet Explorer before you try to upload. This is because Microsoft always wants IE to have a good connection, and if it is running, Web Studio should have one too.
Second, check that you have created a connection. For dialup, open Internet Explorer. Go to the Tools menu and choose Internet Options. Click on the Connections tab. There should be at least one item in the text box named "Dial-up and Virtual Private Network settings". Click on that name. The three radio buttons below the text box should now be enabled. Remember which of the radio buttons is currently set, you'll need to know this for later. Click on the one labeled "Always dial my default connection". Then click ok. Next run Web Studio and then upload. This technique will use your telephone modem to connect to the net instead of your ISP and may solve the problem. Make sure you go back to the Connections tab and reset it to whatever it previously was.
With DSL, open Internet Explorer, even if that isn't your browser of choice. Next choose Internet Options from the Tools menu. Click on the Connections tab in the dialog. Next, click the Setup button and the "New Connection Wizard" will come up. Click Next. Click on the "Connect to Internet" radio button and click Next. Click "Setup My connection manually" and click Next. Click "Connect using a broadband connection that is always on" and click Next.
We skipped the newsletter in the month of July, too many vacations! Hope you all had a great one!
This month we'll be looking at some of the challenges you face uploading your site. Unfortunately there are many factors the lead to successful uploading, any one of which can cause it to fail.
The problem is the combination the protection we seem to need these days against attack from the cyber-criminals and our desire to be connected via email, websites, etc.
The more security we add, the harder it is for us to legitimately use the internet.
The Web Studio Photo Collection
Look for the Photo Collection CD on our website soon! Over 2000 professional photographs all set to integrate directly into your Web Studio Photo Gallery.
Congrats to InfernoCruiser, Jan, Pix, and Lindagrand, our Site of the Month winners for July and August!
More Uploading Tips:
Your FTP address
Your hosting company gives you this. It can be in a variety of forms: ftp.mysite.com, ftp.hostingcompanyname.com, mysite.com, 21.24.56.123. Any of these forms is acceptable. The most reliable is the numeric form (21.24.56.123), or IP Address. If your host gives you one of these, use it. Your host may use a "www" instead of "ftp". If it works, use it. If not, try "ftp", and if that doesn't work, don't use either.
Your Remote Site Folder
Your hosting company gives you this. This is sometimes required by your hosting, and sometimes it is not...it depends on the host. Try leaving it blank and upload. If it doesn't work, try entering it and precede it with a forward slash "/". Your host will send you the remote site folder's name in the email you get that gives you your ftp address, user id and password. You may not know they sent it, however. They may call it by a different name, like "destination folder", or "folder". If you don't see something that looks like that, look for these: htdocs, httpdocs, public_html, www, public, html, http. Any one of these could be a Remote Site Folder. If your uploading doesn't work, and you see one of these in your email enter it with a leading forward slash. They would look like this once you entered it: /htdocs , /httpdocs, /public_html , /www , /public , /html or /http. And of course, you don't enter them all, just the one for your host, and you don't enter the commas.
Uploading with Internet Explorer
You can actually use Internet Explorer to upload your site, it is pretty easy, and since it is a Microsoft product, you shouldn't have problems with firewalls! First you need to know what files to upload, second you need to know how to get Internet Explorer to do it.
What to upload... First go to the Website menu and choose Save Website To Internet. Once you do this, the progress dialog will display and when it is done building the site the Site Info dialog will come up. DO NOT CLICK UPLOAD! Instead, look just to the left of the Upload button. You'll see the location of the website files on your hard drive. Go to Windows and go to that location on your hard drive. Open the folder that has the same name as your project and you'll see a bunch of files and folders in there. These are the files you'll upload and you'll upload them so they are organized exactly as they are in the folder.
How to Upload...Open Internet Explorer. Type your FTP Address in to the Address bar preceding it with "ftp://". If your address is ftp.mysite.com you'll enter ftp://ftp.mysite.com . If it is 15.43.125.55, you'd enter ftp://15.43.125.55 . Then press Enter. You see a Log On As dialog come up. Enter your User Name and password and then press Log On. Once you do this, you'll see your FTP site. It looks exactly like a folder on your computer. That is because it IS a folder on a computer, it just happens to be on your host's computer. Now what you'll do it something you've done a lot, especially with Web Studio...you'll drag and drop the files you found on the previous step and drop them into the Internet Explorer window. Also, if you see a folder with a name like a Remote Site Folder in the Internet Explorer window, double click on it to open it. Then select the files and folder in the folder from step one and drag them into the Internet Explorer window. If it asks if you want to replace the existing files, say yes. If it asks if you want to replace folders and their contents, say yes. That's it!
A Customer's Experience: Internet Explorer Was Stopping Web Studio from Uploading
Here's a quote from a customer who was having problems uploading. What we did to diagnose the problem was to get their FTP information and check it out with an FTP program. We determined the info was correct. Next, we uploaded a one page site to their computer and it worked fine. Then we verified that their firewall was off, that they had a connect, that their computer new about their connection. We were stumped! Here's the email we received about an hour or so later...
"We had Internet Explorer running and were trying to upload. Then we shut down all of the IE's (they were kinda hung) and then WS uploaded fine. "
Apparently Internet Explorer had malfunctioned and Web Studio couldn't get through to the internet, even though they had a good connection!
AOL and Uploading
First, make sure you've done everything in this newsletter that applies to you. Then...
If you have a dialup connection, make sure AOL is running before and during your uploading from Web Studio.
If you have a DSL or other broadband connection, make sure AOL is NOT running before and during your uploading from Web Studio.
