Troubleshooting Your Site

Anything worthwhile takes a little effort. Most of the sites I ve published have at least a couple of glitches to work out after I publish them. A link doesn t work on this one, or the form looks funny on that one, or an animated image doesn t rotate the way it s supposed to. It s almost inevitable that I ll have some tweaking and moving and resizing and resaving to do. This is all a learning process, and because of the changing nature of the Web, and because of the continual upgrading that goes on at the server level at Web hosting companies, we have to be persistent in figuring our way around the variables that we encounter. When your page isn t loading or working as it should, approach it as a puzzle, not a dead end. There s an answer there somewhere ”and if you keep looking for the fly in the ointment, sooner or later you re sure to find it (just remember to wash your hands before you come back to the keyboard, okay?).

Here are some of the more common problems that occur when you are publishing Web sites with FrontPage:

• The computer is disconnected from the system. This may be a server error; the system might be down, or you might have been temporarily disconnected. Check your Internet connection. If the connection is fine, try publishing again shortly to see whether the error has resolved itself.

• The server isn t recognizing my password. Passwords are case-sensitive, so make sure that you re entering the password correctly. If you still get the error, your server might be having difficulties. Wait a few minutes and try again. If all else fails, call your ISP to see whether there is a server problem.

• My hit counter (or some other site element) isn t working. If one of your Web components doesn t work as you thought it would, check with your ISP to make sure FrontPage Server Extensions are installed.

• I uploaded the site successfully but when I try to access the site on the Web, I get a Page not found error. Double-check the location of the files on the remote server. More than once, when publishing a new site, I ve published files to a subfolder instead of the primary Web container. When in doubt, ask your ISP or administrator to verify the server location for your site.