I made my first real website!! I have a couple questions though...

Factual Questions
1

I made my first website!! Actually its not really made yet. I just put up a test page. I have been learning how to use Frontpage 2000 and I like it. My question is about Frontpage. How do I make my webpage on my computer, then upload it to the server without haveing to change the paths of all my pictures and what not. I hope that made sense. The html when I put it together on my computer shows my local file folder as the location of the pictures, files etc… So when I upload the stack of files, it wont load the pics unless I change the path to pull them from the server instead of my comp.

God, that made no sense.

Help.

If you want to see how far it has come so far, here is the link. I just put assinine stuff on there to pratice putting the page together. Those people on there are NOT relatives or friends. Just shots I pulled off of the net.

http://www.beefchips.com

2

Images shouldn’t have full file paths, just relative ones. That is, the HTML code for your webpages should refer to images relative to where the webpage is stored. I have a small website and everything’s in one folder, so my image references say things like ‘<img src=“home.gif”>’ – there’s no need to specify the path.

3

The only case for providing full file paths is that if somebody saves your page to their hard drive, relative addresses won’t work. But not many people worry about that. Relative addresses save time, and make offline testing of your site much easier.

4

I had the same problem with one page I made. Only happened on that server. The other pages I’ve made accept the relative path just fine. FWIW I use Netscape Composer to make the pages. For my CJ2A Page I use the File Manager provided by the server. For my other pages I use CuteFTP to upload. In CuteFTP you need to be sure you use “autodetect” instead of ASCII for the pics to upload correctly. It’s a great program, BTW. I wish I didn’t have to use the File Manager for the Jeep page.

5

You are using an absolute address:
<img border=“0” src=“http://www.geocities.com/beefchips/don.jpg” width=“300” height=“493”>

You can use the tag that crusoe suggests and leave the images in the same directory. That’s an easy way to do it.

I find that building a big site gets cluttered with all the files, and then when things get updated, I don’t end up cleaning everything out. With the limits placed by the ISP or Hosting service it makes sense to keep everything neatly organized for maintenance purposes. In this case, you could have an images directory and use relative addressing.

Example (from the root directory):
<img border=“0” src=“images/don.jpg” width=“300” height=“493”>
or from a different subdirectory
<img border=“0” src="…/images/don.jpg" width=“300” height=“493”>

6

As long as you are using relative path names (or letting Frontpage create and maintain the paths) you should have no problem. Don’t ever put the path in as ‘c://’ etc.
Sounds to me like you’re inserting images the quick ‘n’ dirty way and bypassing Frontpage’s management on them. Let Frontpage handle it, believe me it’s easier in the long run.

It’s problems like this that make modern day web editors so useful. I remember the hassle this sort of thing was when I first learnt HTML. And then you’d discover you’d got the case wrong on a file name…

7

I dont Like Frontpage, it does something weird with the path names. I prefer Netscape Composer which lets you edit on the fly. FP requires special server extensions on your ISP & that costs more here.

8

DREAMWEAVER!

Gah, I refuse to knowingly have anything to do with netscape, except for javascript.

We use frontpage here at work (well, “we” meaning someone other than me) and I certainly don’t like it. When it comes time to mess with the website I offer my help (being the most knowledgable here about websites) and I want to pull my hair out working with Frontpage.

Maybe if I had learned on it I wouldn’t be complaining. But my first concern: it eats up memory by creating directories and saving multiple copies of the same files for no good reason.

To the OP: follow all advice above, and do everything within your power short of breaking the law to use relative paths to everything. Moving websites, editing links, etc, is much much easier once you get the format down.

For example, root folder contains the following:
index.html
pics/
audio/
2000/
inside 2000 is:
index.html
my_first_page.html

NOW, the webpage “my_first_page.html” references images inside the general “pics” folder in the (web)root directory. The link would then be
<img src="…/pics/image.gif">
where the “…” simply means “go up a level before you look for the ‘pics’ folder.” You are welcome to go up as many levels as you need to without ever explicitely referencing the “http://” path.

When you physically view the page on your computer and look at the source, even if you have used relative paths it still may appear that FrontPage turns them into direct links. Can anyone say if this is actually an option you might have to set? I think it was in Dreamweaver, where you told it directly to always use relative paths from within a specific project.

Handy, they only require special extensions if you are going to use those extensions. Nothing prevents you from integrating Perl scripts, for example, onto a server. If you don’t do anything extra-special, Front Page is just another WYSIWYG HTML builder. Don’t need the extensions for jack.

Having said that, I couldn’t get the extensions to work with our webpage, and the dumb-ass hosts didn’t have a clue either (all the errors were from the hosts’ side, too). My question to them is: why offer it if you cannot reasonably support it??? sigh So we went to Perl. Eris bless Matt’s Script Archive!

9

eris, ever if you use FP & your own scripts you have to go through that FP HTML to edit out their webbots & this is completely unneccessary with Netscape Composer, which is also free…

Matts Script Archive is nice as is cgi-resources.com (best)

10

I think i sorta understand what you mean. erislovers explaination made alot of sense. I had no idea what the “…” was supposed to be. Everyones advice was helpful. I am still lost though. Oh well, I will go buy a book on FP2000 i guess. I am having fun messing with this though!

11

Once you’re comfortable enough with using Frontpage or Netscape’s editor go check out http://www.w3.org or just view the source of your web page and find out how it is put together. From there, write your HTML by hand using a simple text editor rather than Frontpage 2000 with its browser specific tags. w3.org sets the standards for the various flavors of HTML, xHTML, XML, CSS and other things related to the web.
To check your HTML to make sure its valid and to find out what mistakes there might be, use http://validator.w3.org which checks the syntax and structure of your HTML and if it validates you can put a little 88x31 button on your page linking back to the site to show off you can write valid HTML.
Not only will you learn a valuable skill but you will also create leaner web pages which will accomodate any browser rather than a specific browser.
Also take the time to learn cascading style sheets (CSS) which separate form (fonts, colors, etc) from structure (html) and make sites easier to edit along with using neat tricks. http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ is a good place to start.

12

Thanks. Good tips. I just added a Flash animated title to the page. I am proud of that! Check it out! Nothing spectacular, but cool none the less.

http://www.beefchips.com