Work Journal
Week of June 21, 1999
June 25, 1999 - I have recreated this site using Dreamweaver. I have also added a new section How I Created This Web Site which briefly out lines the tools I have used to create this web site. I have uploaded a copy of my Old Web Site which looks mostly the same as new one. The real difference is the size which though minor could be significant on a large web site. The new site is smaller because it was created using Dreamweaver which does not put in the large number of headers which Word 2000 does.
Saturday June 26, 1999
Now trying Front Page 2000 as Web Page editor and manager. I have pulled the link to my old web site and removed it from the server. I have also started a new section called Work Journal which I shall use to summarize the work I am doing as I learn to maintain this site and do projects in my home computer lab.
I have started to make enough changes and learn enough that I figure that the best way to handle explaining what I am doing is to start a Work Journal. I was originally going to try to summarize things in Tips & Tricks but I have not made much progress with that format. I may or may not abandon the tips & tricks section altogether. This will depend on how this work Journal works out. The format of this Work Journal will likely change quite a bit over time as I get a handle on how to format the Journal based on what I find works best.
Today I have been working with Front Page 2000. I first used it purely as a HTTP editor. What I mean by this is that I used it to open and edit the web pages I created with Dreamweaver. This worked fine but wasted a lot of, if not most of Front Pages features. I then used the import feature to import and convert my pages into Front Page. This gives me the ability to use Font Page to manage my web site. What I mean by this is that Front Page will help me manage the links between my web pages, do reports on when pages have been modified etc..
Before I imported my web site the Hyperlinks icon on the view task bar in Front Page produced no results. After importing my web site into Front Page the Hyperlinks icon now produces an illustration of my web site and shows the links between the various pages. This is useful as I can use this feature to tell if the links between pages are broken or not, or if I have forgotten to create a link to a new page that I have just created.
I just used LeechFTP to take my old Word 2000 based web site off of the server. I noticed at the same time that Front Page created a number of directories when I imported my web pages. Some of the directories are empty others are not. I assume that these directories have to do with Front Pages need to store information about all my web pages so that they can be managed. As time goes by I am sure that I will come across the reason for these directories and what information they contain.
As I write this I come to appreciate the good text editing incorporated into Front Page. As a Word user I find that having the text editing in Front Page work the same a great benefit. Incorrect spellings are underlined for me, F7 runs the spell checker, a right mouse click gives me a context sensitive drop down menu.
I have a computer lab which I use to experiment and learn about computers and software. It is in a perpetual state of flux as I tend to play with too many things. I have gotten away from this somewhat lately by relocating the lab to a larger work space. This has allowed me to setup a production PC which I use for my daily needs. The extra workspace has allowed me to dedicate space and peripherals to one PC. In my old work space I shared one monitor, keyboard and mouse with all my PCs via a switch box. Now only the testing PCs are on the switch box. My printer is connected to an NT server where I store all my data etc..
My other equipment is a mish mash of old Pentiums and 486s which are configured as Exchange servers, NT Workstations, Novell servers or in pieces, mostly in pieces. I have found having a variety of equipment handy for studying for certification exams. Some of my PCs are setup to dual boot to multiple operating systems. This allows me to have less hardware as well as try different operating systems on the same hardware in the same day with out doing a bunch of installs or hard drive swapping. A good example is my production PC. It has Windows NT 4 on it which I use to do all my work, and also has Windows 98 installed on it for game playing.
Well time to try and get Front Page to publish this site to the web.
Publishing took only an few minutes to setup and do. The help files did a good job of outlining how to setup FTP in Front Page to publish the web site. Now I am going to save these changes and see how it does at only publishing the pages that have changed.
It worked! I saved my changes, told Front Page to publish only changed pages and I watched as only the Work Journal page was uploaded to the server. This site is small right now so publishing only the changed pages vs. all the pages is not a big deal. But for large sites the ability of the publishing tool to publish only changed pages would be a great benefit.
Sunday June 27, 1999
Doing some work to better organize this site. I have created a new page called Reports which is a listing of the things I had planed for the Tips & Tricks section which is no more. I have also moved the How I Created This Web Site section into the Reports area.
I did the unthinkable and wrote over all the work I did earlier today. Stupid operator errors caused by my getting too carried away with what I was doing and not paying attention to what I was doing. I'll chalk it up to the learning process when dealing with a new program.
What I have been doing is reorganizing to make this place easier to use, and easier for me to maintain. I have been learning about Front Page 2000 in the process. I deleted one page and renamed another. When I published the changes Front Page asked if I wanted to remove the deleted file from the server to which I answered yes. The renamed file was treated as if it were a deleted file. The reason for this is that I renamed the file on my hard drive, then when I published changes Front Page could not match up the file names between the server and my computer. Thus Front Page considers the file on the web server as an extra unwanted file and asks if I want to remove it from the server.
It looks like I have things back to where I want them. It seems that when working with Front Page in Normal view with frames, you have to careful when doing a save-as, you can mess things up with out even realizing it as I did earlier today. What I did is decide that I wanted to rename the page showing in the right side frame and used the file save-as command not realizing I had saved the whole frames page as the new name and not contents of the page I was editing. So beware how and where you use the save-as command for your own safety.