Website Export to Internet

Step 5 - Export >

Website Export to Internet

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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

To export all the Site's files, you first need to use the WebSite Address (URL) field to specify the URL (for example, http//www.mysite.com) where the Site will be located once published. This information is required to ensure the correct function of any RSS Feeds, shopping carts, or SiteMaps which the Software automatically creates and links.

In the Pro edition, the URL is also inserted in the Page's code through the Open Graph tag og:url.

Once this is done, you will need to enter the following 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. You can type in the name of the destination folder directly, or click on the button to call up the Destination Folder window, which displays all of the folders located in the Server, and click on the one to use.

The folder within which you publish your Site should contain an index.html file. In any case, if you're not sure which folder to publish your site in, contact your Provider and ask them to confirm: not all folders in the Server can be used for publication.

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.

After defining the required parameters, just click on the Next button to connect to the Server and proceed to publish your Site online.

During the export, WebSite X5 copies all the files in the save folder to the server. If this folder already contains files with the same names as those being published, they will be overwritten. WebSite X5 will never automatically delete files already present on the Server: you will need to manually delete any obsolete files.

Click to expand/collapseReference: Commands for working on the Server

The Destination Folder window, which is called up by clicking on the button available for the Destination folder option, not only displays the locations of the folders and files on the Server, but also includes a series of commands for managing them:

Click to expand/collapse

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.