Downloading your web files to edit with FrontPage 2000

I presume that if you are using FrontPage 2000, you are doing so on a personally owned computer where you can store your web files long term. However, there are reasons why it may be necessary to download all of your web files from personal.bgsu.edu. For example, if you create a document on a Macintosh or lab computer and transfer it to personal.bgsu.edu using Fetch or FTP, you won't have a copy of the document on your home computer. Or, if you want to add some Maple graphs to your web page, you'll (probably) need to run Maple on a Macintosh. When you export to a web page, Maple will produce a main html file and possible several image files, in a separate folder. To add these to your web page, you have a few options:

Copy them to a disk and transfer them to the folder on your home machine where you store your web files, add links from your existing web pages to the new page(s), and publish. However, it can be difficult to put all the files and associated folders in the right places. Also, your web page won't be updated until you get to your home computer. In the Scientific Computing Lab, you'll probably need a Zip disk to do this because only a few computers have 3 1/2 inch floppy drives; then you'll need a Zip disk at home too.
Use Fetch to transfer them to your public_html directory (or another directory) on personal.bgsu.edu, then use an FTP program to download them to your PC and put them in the folder where your web files are stored. Once again, it can be difficult to put all the files and associated folders in the right places. Sometimes you forget which files you modified and sometimes there will be additional files you didn't know about! Also, your old web pages won't have links to the new one(s) until you work on them at home.
Use Fetch to download all of your web files to the Macintosh that you're working on, use Maple to export html files and image files to the local folder where your web files are, use FrontPage Explorer and Editor to add links from your existing web pages to the new page(s), then publish the web to personal.bgsu.edu. The next time you use your home computer to edit your web files, you'll need to use an FTP program to download them from personal.bgsu.edu first, to avoid editing older versions of the files. You need to learn the Macintosh version of FrontPage, which is different from the PC version, but at least the webpage is updated right away.

I have tried #3 and have found that it isn't too difficult to move all the files around. In fact, it's easier to move all of the files rather than just the few that you add or edit on the Macintosh. So I would recommend #3.

Here's how you do it.

First, download your web files to the Macintosh you're using, launch FrontPage Explorer, and edit you web pages as described here. Then publish your web files back to personal.bgsu.edu as described in Publishing your FrontPage web.

Once you return to your home computer, you can use WS_FTP to download your files from personal.bgsu.edu. Before you do this, I would strongly recommend making a backup copy of your web files! Just rename your folder with a name that includes the current date.

Basics of using WS_FTP are described in Using WS_FTP. Here is an illustration of how to download a whole folder. Navigate to the view of the directory on personal.bgsu.edu that you want to download (probably your whole public_html folder) on the right side of the WS_FTP screen and find the folder you want to download it to on your local machine on the left side of the WS_FTP screen, as below. If you already have a public_html folder on your local machine, I would suggest using the Rename button on the left side of the screen to name it, for example, public_html_2003-01-10, so that you have a dated backup, just in case the download you are about to do gets messed up.

I have clicked once on the public_html directory on personal.bgsu.edu. This tells WS_FTP while directory I want to transfer. Now click on the left arrow between the two halves of the screen to begin transferring files from personal.bgsu.edu to your local machine. You'll get a confirmation window:

WS_FTP may ask you what to do when a file you are downloading appears to be older than the existing file on your local machine. That would probably be due to you having edited it at home after you last uploaded it, and you should probably not have it download that file. Hopefully there aren't too many files like this!

Note: If you have many files and a slow modem connection, this may take a long time!

Now start FrontPage. Pull down File, Open Web, and navigate to the folder where your web files are stored. Just single click the folder and choose Open.

FrontPage may tell you that it needs to add some files to the web in order to keep track of hyperlinks, etc. That's OK. It's a result of having used a different program, such as FrontPage 1.0 on the Macintosh, to edit your web pages. I've never had any trouble with it, except that it sometimes tells me the task list was modified on some date .... I just replace it anyway.

If you only have .pdf files in your folder, it is time to do File, New, type some stuff, and save it as index.html.