Chapter 12: Making Your Worldwide Debut

Drum roll, please! It's the moment of truth-time to unveil your painstakingly prepared, lovingly built Web site and make it visible to the world.

In this chapter, we show you how to put your site through its paces to get it ready to send out onto the World Wide Web. We also give you tips on how to update your site to keep it fresh and interesting.

Determining What "Publishing Your Web Site" Means

Publishing your Web site means making the site visible on the World Wide Web for all to see (or, in the case of a smaller-scale intranet site, visible to members of that intranet). For your site to be accessible to visitors, you must copy all the site's files and folders from your computer to a Web server. A Web server is a computer running special software that maintains a high-speed, round-the-clock connection to the Internet or to an internal network.

A typical Web-hosting service provider offers storage space on its Web server for a monthly fee, although you can also find Web hosting for free. The amount of storage space varies, ranging from 100MB free sites to sites that offer 200 gigabytes and charge a monthly fee.

• A shared Web server means the server that holds your Web site also holds other Web sites. This option works well for all except the largest and most complex Web sites, which benefit from dedicated servers.

• A dedicated Web server holds only one Web site. The service fee for a dedicated server is therefore significantly higher.

If you're not sure which option is best for you, check the different plans and the storage space available at different price levels, and talk to the Web host's customer service personnel before you sign up for a Web hosting service.

Tip 

If you're not sure how much file space your Web site takes up, try this: In the Folder List task pane, right-click the site's top-level folder and then choose Properties from the pop-up menu. The dialog box that appears displays the Web site's total file size. (The file size shown there doesn't include the size of any subsites; you must open subsites separately to check their sizes.

For more information about what subsites are and do, see Chapter 13.)

If I created my site in FrontPage, do I still need FrontPage Server Extensions?

The answer is … it depends. A Web site built from scratch with Expression Web can be hosted on any Web server. But if you originally created your site by using FrontPage, and the site con tains features that require FrontPage Server Extensions to be able to work, you still need to host the site on a server with FrontPage Server Extensions installed. Be aware that many Web hosts will likely stop offering and supporting FrontPage Server Extensions because Microsoft no longer builds software that require them. Chapter 15 lists alternatives to popular FrontPage Web components that require FrontPage Server Extensions. Chapter 16 also lists online sources for getting help from masterminds who are dedicated to helping former FrontPage users make the transition to Expression Web.

Here are the FrontPage features that need the help of FrontPage Server Extensions to display properly in your site:

• Nested subsites (subsites within subsites)

• The following Web components: Confirmation field, Web search, hit counter, table of contents based on categories, and Top 10 list

• FrontPage workgroup features, including source control (as set up in FrontPage)

• FrontPage discussion groups

• FrontPage user-registration systems

• Usage reports

• File-upload form field

• Custom link bars

• Shared border and background properties

• Permissions and security (as set up in FrontPage)

If your site uses forms built in FrontPage, you can adjust the form handler to work on any Web server with a form handler installed. See Chapter 6 for details.

If you're in the market for Web hosting, check out http://www.freewebspace.net. This search tool helps you compare free and subscription-based Web hosting services.

If you're building an intranet site, your company maintains its own Web server and network connection. Speak to your company's system administrator for details about your network setup.