How to Use FrontPage Server Extensions to Publish a Web Site in Microsoft Expression Web

How to Use FrontPage Server Extensions to Publish a Web Site in Microsoft Expression Web
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FrontPage Server Extensions

As we mentioned in Part 1 of this series, it’s not necessary to use FrontPage Server Extensions to publish a web site with Expression Web. However, this option can make the task a little quicker and easier. This method of publication can only be used if the remote server to which you are publishing is running FrontPage Server Extensions. So, if this is your preferred publishing option, you may want to do some extra research when trying to decide on a web hosting service.

Even if the remote web server you are using does support FrontPage extensions, you will most likely have to enable them yourself. Don’t worry though, this is pretty simple and usually only requires a click of a button. Just check with your web host provider to find out the exact details, and make sure that the extensions are installed before you attempt to use this method of web publishing in Expression Web.

Publishing using FrontPage Server Extensions

Step 1: Make sure that the web site you want to publish is open in Expression Web, and start out as described in Part 1 of this series by selecting Publish Site from the File menu. (Alternatively, you can select Remote Web Site from the Site menu.)

If this is the first time you have tried to publish this site, the Remote Web Site Properties window should automatically appear on your screen. However, if it doesn’t for some reason, hit CTRL + SHIFT + R to bring up the window.

Once this window is on your screen, click on the radio button next to FrontPage Server Extensions and then fill in the URL for the web site you are creating in the Remote Web site location field. Note that it is important to include the https:// part of the web address as shown in the screenshot below. (Click the image for a larger view.)

Step 2: Next, click on the Publishing tab in this window and select which publishing options you would like to use. The choices you make here can always be changed or overridden later, but it’s good to go ahead and decide what you want to use as a default method of publishing now. If your web site contains subsites, you can check the box next to Include subsites to save you from having to publish each one separately.

Publishing Tab

Step 3: Click OK to continue. Now, a connection window should appear on the screen asking you for your User name and Password. Most times, this will be the same credentials that you use to access your web hosting account, but check your provider’s documentation just to make sure.

Connection Window

Step 4: Once you’ve connected to the remote web server, the main panel in Expression Web will show two columns. In the left column entitled Local Web site, there will be a listing of all of the files from the local directory in which you designed the web site in Expression Web. The right column will contain a list of all the items currently residing on the Remote Web site.

Publishing Screen

From here, you can choose to copy files from your local site to the remote site or vice versa. There are a couple of different methods you can use to copy these files.

If you want to copy the entire site in accordance with the options you selected on the Publishing tab in the Remote Web Site Properties window in Step 2, you can use one of the options found in the lower right corner of the screen under Publish all changed pages or Publish all pages (depending on the options you chose).

Publish All Pages

Here, you can choose to copy all items from your local directory to the remote one, from the remote back to your local machine, or to synchronize the two directories updating each one with the most recent copy of every file. This last option is particularly useful if more than one person is making updates to the remote web site.

Alternatively, if you want a bit more control over the files published, you can select the specific files you want to copy from either of the columns in the main portion of the page. After you’ve chosen which files to copy, click on the arrow to move them to the other site. Clicking on the “double arrow” will synchronize the two sites, copying the most recent version of each file chosen to both directories.

Copy Selected Files

Step 5: When you’ve finished copying your files to the remote web server, it’s a good idea to go view the live site to make sure that everything looks the way you planned. In the lower left corner of the screen under Status, you can click on the View your Remote Web site link to open a browser window showing the home page of your newly published site.

Status

For more tips and tricks, be sure to browse through the other items in Bright Hub’s collection of Expression Web tutorials.

This post is part of the series: Publishing a Web Site with Microsoft Expression Web

In this set of guides, we’ll cover how to publish and maintain your web site using Microsoft Expression Web.

  1. Publishing Options in Microsoft Expression Web
  2. Using FrontPage Server Extensions to Publish in Expression Web
  3. Using Expression Web’s Built-In FTP Client