Where Are Your Files Created on a Server-based Site?

When you create a disk-based Web site, it is easy to know exactly where your files are being created because you are specifying the exact location when the Web site is created. It might not, however, be quite so easy to tell when you are creating a server-based Web site.

If you are creating your Web site on a hosting company's Web server or on your ISP's Web server, you might not have access to the files outside of FrontPage. However, some hosting companies will provide access to your files via FTP. If your hosting company or ISP does not have the FrontPage Server Extensions installed, using FTP to access your Web site is perfectly fine. However, if they do have the FrontPage Server Extensions installed, using FTP to access your files is not a good idea.

When you change, add, or remove a file on an extended Web server using FTP, the FrontPage Server Extensions are not aware of that change. Therefore, the FrontPage metadata are not updated and get out of sync with the Web site. In some cases, this can be corrected by opening the Web site in FrontPage and selecting Tools, Recalculate Hyperlinks, but that won't always do the trick. In worst-case scenarios, things get so badly out of sync that the only way to correct them is to reinstall the FrontPage Server Extensions on the Web server.

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The Recalculate Hyperlinks option in FrontPage does more than its name implies. When you run this command, FrontPage checks through all of its metadata files to make sure that they are synchronized with the Web site. It will also check all FrontPage form handlers and other Web components to make sure that their connection to the FrontPage Server Extensions is in working order.

In many cases in which Web components are not working correctly or FrontPage isn't displaying files or folders correctly, running the Recalculate Hyperlinks option will correct the problem.

If you are creating your server-based Web site on your local Web server, your content will be stored in C:\inetpub\wwwroot by default. Therefore, if you create a Web site at http://localhost/mysite, the physical location for the files is C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite by default.

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If you are creating a disk-based Web site and you forget where you created the Web site, it's simple to find again. By selecting File, Recent Sites, you can find the last Web site that was opened. If you have just created a new Web site, it will appear first on this list, and you will be able to see exactly where it is stored on your hard drive.