Stone Design Forums

I know I have asked this before, a long time ago. But, what preferences or whatever needs to be set so that when I upload a Create created webpage to Dot Mac the graphics will show? I know it is something really dumb!

Thanks
Charles

When you copy your file to .Mac's "Sites" folder, be sure to also copy the images subfolder!

As for getting the site to load without adding a file at the end of the, eg,

http://homepage.mac.com/stone_design/

There should be an index.html file.

For .Mac, the trick is to use the "Copy" option in Web -> Web Options, "misc" tab:

index.html creation is:

(select copy).

Many if not most ISP's use UNIX, which supports soft links. .Mac does not though! The big advantage of a link is that when you modify the source file, the index.html points to it, so it's updated.

Thanks again for the help. I have finally concluded that there is some kind of problem on Dot Mac. I have spent at least 8 hours of time at the computer trying to get my four page web site up and going on Dot Mac. I finally decided that enough is enough. My local ISP has user space, so I have tried that instead. With a bit of help from the local help desk, I have my site up and going in about 1.5 hours time. Apple may have just lost a customer! I could not find any way to use "External HTML" in any way, shape or form. I tried out iWeb and HomePage on Dot Mac. I don't use the expression often, but, "THEY SUCK!"

I am a great believer in the KISS rule. I think they are in danger of forgetting that at Apple.

Enough flame,
Charles

I think I finally found the magic clue! Youcan't put a folder in the iDisk/Sites area, it has to be the individual files from the folder that Create creates when you ask it to make web-pages for you. I found this clue in an answer Andrew gave a couple of years ago in the forum. Just didn't come across it when I seached the forum.

Which leads to a futher question. That means only one web-page from an external HTML?

No, you can have sub-levels- I'm able to make using Create (and it might contain a bunch of sub-folders - for example:

http://homepage.mac.com/stone_design/Ghana

I just dragged the output "Ghana" folder to my iDisk...

Hmm! I'm beginning to think the problem was at the Dot Mac end. I'll try a few things again.

BTW, those caskets are over the top and then some! I'm not sure that "cool" is the adjective, but, maybe a new word is needed??

Thanks again,
Charles

OK, maybe this is it. I can't get to the page on Homepage that says "Create a Page", I could only get to "Selecting a Theme." Now, what happens if you do "Select a Theme" and click on the "External HTML" button, is that you will see a three panel finder, the left panel shows "Site", the middle panel will show the folder or the files that you uploaded with iDisk. But, if you select the folder, you then get to the right panel. In that panel, you will NOT see an "index.html" file. It is apparently stripped out. If you choose one of the other html pages, the graphics will not show.

As I indicated in post above. If you upload just the files into the middle panel, the index.html file stays, you can select it, and everything works just fine.

Soooo, here is what I conclude. Dot Mac assumes that you will have a home page of some kind, below which you can add pages or even whole folders. Once you have some kind of a page in that middle panel that has an index, you will find yourself at the "Create a page" section instead of the "Select a Theme" section and things seem to work from there.

At least that is what I get out of all of this so far.

Charles

One more time: I think I have finally figured this out. I had assumed that one ALWAYS had to use HomePage in some form or other to get web-pages into Dot Mac. This isn't true. The following paragraph is the one that I finally found and finally understood

"Note: If you give your start page a name other than "index.html," or copy it to a subfolder within your Sites folder, you will need to include the name and path in your site's address. For example, if your start page is "home.html" in a folder named Kids inside your Sites folder within your Web folder, the address is http://web.mac.com/yourmembername/Kids/home.htm"

I still don't like the look of any of the Apple HomePage layouts, colors or much of anything else. I'll just go on using Create and do it my way!

Charles

This has been a problem in the past and it is a pain to get your site published and working on a .Mac account.

If you type web.mac.com/username then this will look for an index.html in web.mac.com/markforge/Web/Sites which is where iWeb publishes your site. If you use this location and then use iWeb it will overwrite your site.

Homepage uses another folder.

homepage.mac.com/username or homepage.mac.com/username/foldername/filename.html will not work for me. Maybe because I have tried Homepage and iWeb.

All of this is making Create incompatible with .Mac where it should be simple.

We urgently need a publish to .Mac button which makes the process simple. These are not the sort of problems first time users want to encounter. I wanted to write a tutorial to help people publish to .Mac but I can no longer get it to work for myself.

That has been some frustrating hours but this is how I see it so far.

.Mac does not like links from index.html to first page so use copy. Andrew may be able to tell us why .Mac refuses to accept these files.

If you want to use
http://web.mac.com/username
you need an index.html file in
Web/Sites folder of your iDisk.

If you want to use
http://homepage.mac.com/username
you need an index.html file in
Sites folder (this is not the same Sites folder as above this is the Sites folder at the same level as the Web folder above not the Sites folder within the Web folder. Well done Apple).

If you want to access files at sub-levels then you can if they are in the files specified.
http://web.mac.com/username/mysites/dimensions.html
dimensions.html would be in
Web/Sites/mysites of your iDisk

If you use iWeb or Homepage they will overwrite your index.html page.

I think Apple have made this unduly complicated.
Lets hope Andrew has a few words of wisdom.

Blond, thanks for the further information!

I think part of my frustration on this whole affair is that usually Mac and Apple stuff just work WITHOUT that kind of monkey business. I mean, when is the last time you really sat down and read, say, 20 pages of manual trying to figure something out?? Or read more than 2 or 3 help pages?

Well, we won't say anything about any other operating systems, right?

Thanks again, at least until the next question!
Charles

PS, when I get the web-page up to the speed I want, I'll post a link.

Both Panic's Transmit
http://www.panic.com/transmit/
and Ambrosia's Dragster
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/dragster/
have excellent iDisk support allowing you to set the path to the folder you wish to upload to. You can set a nickname like web.mac and homepage.mac which makes identifying which web address will access which folder much easier.

Andrew uses other ftp software if that supports iDisk I guess he will post.

Something else worth trying is
Connect to your iDisk then double click to show its contents in a Finder window. Navigate to the Sites folder you wish to use. Now drag this Sites folder to the side bar on the left of the Finder window. Now eject your iDisk then open a new Finder window and click the Sites tab in the side bar. You will be asked for your .Mac username and password. If you save in Keychain this will now always mount your iDisk and take you to the folder you want.

The down side is you may end up with more than one Sites folder in the Finder window side bar. All looking the same. As far as I am aware you can not change the names of these folders. I tried changing the icons but I do not think iDisk supports this. Andrew can you jump in here and see if there is a way and check out Leopard.

1. Only Create documents of more than one page get an index.html created (unless your name that single page "index" in Info -> Web -> Page Name

2. Only "copied" index.html creation works on iDisk because it's not a unix file system but a file system that does recognize soft links - choose that in Web -> Web Options -> Misc, "index.html creation is" "copied"

3. Here's the weird one - once you use APple's creation tools, their server sets up an automatic link between some page made by their tools and index.html - so I made a filesharing page at:

http://homepage.mac.com/stone_design

their tools made an invisible connection to this actual file:

http://homepage.mac.com/stone_design/FileSharing1.html

4. What I typically do is just drag the folder to the iDisk and create sites within my main site - like:

http://homepage.mac.com/stone_design/Ghana/


So, it's point 3 that makes their system so inscrutable!

Solved! "The Case of the Missing index.html File"
Thanks to Andrew and Blond

So, in summary:
1: If you use Create to make a web-page, simply copy the while folder to the Sites folder with iDisk. Then, send the URL to your friends or whoever.

2: If you use Dot Mac programs, let them do their thing.

3: Don't confuse the two systems!

Again, thanks from a much happier camper!
Charles

Point 4 above, I can not get my iDisk to work this way. I have to place files into the 2 locations I have listed above to be able to access them from a browser.

Point 3 above, simply you don't access the file you think you should.

It is too easy to break what you have done if you use Homepage and iWeb. Any ideas how to overcome this?