The Development Environment

Collaborative development is typically done on what is called a development server. The development server holds the collaborative project until it is ready to be published to a live server for the intended audience to see and interact with.

Traditionally, the development server is built on the same hardware and software platform on which the final project will be launched, which provides a means of testing all aspects of the final project. This practice is encouraged because it not only gives the developers a chance to work on the same system they expect the audience to work on, but it also helps identify unforeseen problems with the chosen platform. Development servers also have been used to provide backup systems when the deployment server goes down.

Budgets and other issues sometimes prevent a separate development server. It is possible, although not recommended, to develop the site on a disk-based Web or in a section of the site rendered unavailable to anyone but the development team.

TIP

Don't let the term development server scare you away. If you are developing a basic site, your development server can be something as simple as a shared folder on your network.

Development servers aren't about the technology; they are about making sure that you have things right before you publish your work to the entire world.


Publishing Issues

To prevent the wrong information from being placed online, FrontPage 2003 offers the capability of marking a page or document to prevent it from being published during the normal publication process. All documents are marked for publishing by default, but you can quickly change the status of anything on the site.

This is powerful because it keeps the development Web from becoming an all-or-nothing situation. You can publish your development server on a regular basis without fear of half-completed documents or other such problems that can come from the use of multiple participants in the Web design process.

To exclude a specific file from being published with the rest of the Web, select the Exclude option from the Properties dialog box's Workgroup tab, shown in Figure 32.2; do so by right-clicking the document and selecting Properties from the menu.

Figure 32.2. You can exclude a file from being published to the Web until you are sure that the file is ready to be published.

graphics/32fig02.gif

Use the Publishing Exclude option when a document needs review or an edit before it should be published. This is an important issue when holding content for legal, content, or code review. Upon completion of the review, the reviewer can deselect the option. Make a note to the person in charge of the document to be sure to deselect the option when the task is completed.

TIP

Getting a team to remember to deselect the Publishing Exclude option might be difficult. This could result in a complete site that isn't allowed to be published. Before publishing the site, run the Publish Status report (described later) to determine whether any pages require additional work.




Special Edition Using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003
Special Edition Using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003
ISBN: 0789729547
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 443

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net