Destination Folder

Step 5 - Export >

Destination Folder

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You can publish your website on the Internet in this window.

WebSite X5 provides a built-in FTP engine so you can publish your websites directly online. All the files necessary for correctly displaying a website on the Internet are saved on the computer you used to create the website. You have to copy your project files to a server (a computer that is permanently connected to the Internet) so that other people will be able to see your website online.

Click to expand/collapseReference: Commands for establishing a connection to the server

The first thing to do when exporting your website is to specify the Session Profile (this data is provided by your Internet provider):

Server Type: specify the connection to use for publishing the website files on the server. Choose the one that your server uses from the following:
FTP - File Transfer Protocol: this is the default options. FTP is one of the oldest data transmission protocols and is still widely used. The data exchanged between client and server is not encrypted, according to the original FTP specifications.
SFTP - SSH File Transfer Protocol: this is an Internet protocol that guarantees secure data transfer, using remote encrypted sessions and remote file manipulation.
FTPS - FTP over explicit TLS/SSL: to ensure security, this protocol adds an encrypted SSL/TLS layer to the FTP protocol, plus a series of commands and reply codes.
FTP Address: enter your FTP address in this field. An example of an FTP address is "ftp.websitex5.com", where "websitex5.com" is the domain name.
Username / Password: enter your username and password in these fields.
Save password: if you select this option, your password will be saved and you will not have to enter it again in the future.

There are also some Optional parameters, not strictly necessary for establishing a connection with the server, but you can enter them if you want to:

Destination folder: enter the pathname of the destination folder on the server, provided by the Internet provider. If you do not enter the pathname here, you will be able to do so in the next window that WebSite X5 shows.
Port: enter the name of the gateway on the server to which you want to establish a connection (your Internet provider will give you this information). It isn't usually necessary to change the default value.
Simultaneous connections: enter the number of connections to the server that the built-in FTP engine needs to open simultaneously in order to publish the website files. The number of connections is equivalent to the maximum number of files that can be exported simultaneously.

The server you use must support Simultaneous connections. Although  support is guaranteed, only a certain number of simultaneous connections can be handled efficiently. Try starting with 3 connections and progressively increase the number until you find the best number that the server can handle on its bandwidth. Generally speaking, it is not advisable to specify more than 10 simultaneous connections.

Use Passive FTP: this is active by default, and it means that passive FTP is used for exporting projects. It guarantees greater connection compatibility with the server.
Enable gzip compression: this is active by default, and means that the project files are compressed during the export procedure, so reducing export times.

Not all servers support gzip compression. If this option is selected, and your server does not support it, the files will not be compressed but the project will still be published. Gzip compression works very well for large files (that contain a lot of graphics, for example), but it is not recommended for small files.

When you have set all the necessary parameters for establishing a connection with the server, you can specify the Upload Mode (what and how you actually want to publish):

Upload all WebSite files to the Internet: the entire website project is uploaded and published. This option is recommended the first time you upload your website, or when you have made a lot of changes to project files.
Export only the files modified after last export on date : only the files that have been changed since the last export are uploaded. This option is recommended for websites that are constantly undergoing updates as it takes less time to upload the files than it would to upload the entire project.

The publication date is saved in the project file, so it is important to always save changes after publishing files.

Even if you choose to export only modified files, the HTML pages and resource files (in the RES folder) are also uploaded, because it is likely that they will have been automatically modified in some way.

Export only Blog and RSS Feed: if you select this option, only the .PHP and XML files of the Blog and the .XML files of the RSS feed are published (see Step 1 - Website Settings | Advanced). You can only select this option if the Blog and/or RSS feed have already been published once. It is useful for updating your Blog with new posts and adding new news to the RSS feed, when no other changes have been made to the website.
Click to expand/collapseReference: Commands for going online

When you have set all the parameters, click on the Next button to establish a connection to the server. When this has been established, a list of folders already on the server is displayed. Use the available commands to move to the folder in which you want to publish your project files.

The folder where you want to publish your website must have an index.html file. If you are not sure which folder to use, ask your Internet provider: not all the folders on the server can be used for publishing websites.

Click to expand/collapse

The commands for working on folders and files on the server are:

Go back to the previous folder

This takes you back to the folder on the previous level.

Update

The contents of the folder are reloaded.

New folder

You can create a new folder.

Delete

You can delete the selected file or folder.

Rename

You can change the name of the selected file or folder.

Upload file to Server / Download the selected file from the Server

You can publish one or more files on the server that are not part of the project, or you can download files published on the server to your computer.

Display List / Display Details

You can choose the level of detail of the file list.

Finally, there is a section with two further options:

Log: you can choose to display the message log and any errors that may have occurred during the connection with the server.
Queued files: you can choose to display the upload status of the files being published on the server (the maximum number of files depends on the number of simultaneous connections). A status bar shows the progress of each file transfer. When a file has been transferred, it is removed from the queue.

When exporting a project, WebSite X5 copies all the files in the registration folder to the server. If this folder contains files with the same name as those being published, the latter will be overwritten. WebSite X5 never deletes any files that are on the server: this has to be done manually.