Managing your HTML Publications and Moving your Files to the Web Server

When you use WordToWeb, you will create your HTML publications on your local hard drive. Ultimately, of course, you will need to move these files to your server in order to publish your pages on the Web or your Intranet.

It is important to understand that WordToWeb assumes that all the HTML pages and graphics in a particular publication will reside in a single directory. This assumption greatly simplifies the creation and management of your pages, and makes it very easy to move your files from your PC to the server.

Managing your Publications

Here are some suggestions for making the publishing and management process as simple as possible:

• Keep every HTML publication (in other words every WordToWeb project) in its own directory. Remember that WordToWeb will place all the HTML pages and all the graphics it creates in the project directory. Be sure to create a unique directory for every publication. This makes it easy to keep track of your pages—especially if you will be reconverting your publication periodically in order to pick up changes in the Word source files.
• Check the Delete GIFs from Previous Conversions box in Panel #5 of the wizard. New GIF files will be created for the graphics in your Word documents every time you convert your publication, so if you don't check this box, the project directory will contain extra, outdated GIF files. Again, you must have your publication in its own directory in order to use this feature; otherwise, GIFs from other publications will be deleted.
• If you just want to quickly convert a single Word document to HTML, and you are using the Convert to HTML command under the File menu, you might want to consider creating a new output directory (or clearing out existing files in the target directory). This will make it easier to locate the files you need to publish. Note that if you think you may need to reconvert the file at some point in the future, it is probably worthwhile to set up a WordToWeb project and create a dedicated directory for the publication.

Publishing on the Web or Intranet

Assuming that you have followed the previous suggestions about managing your publications, moving the files to your server is very easy:

1. In your publication directory, find all the .HTM and .GIF files.
2. Move these files into a single directory on your web server. In many cases, you may need to give the files to your Webmaster, who will take care of placing them on the server. If this is the case, you may find it convenient to compress the files with a utility such as PKZIP and then send this file by email to the proper person.

Once you have placed your pages on the server, you need to provide a link so that readers can reach your publication from your home page or other area on your website. The best page to link to depends on how you have set up your publication. The following table shows the recommended "entry points" for a publication:

Publication Type	Recommended Starting Page
Multiple HTML Pages (without frames)	Global TOC: w2wtoc.htm
Multiple HTML Pages (with frames)	Frame Page: w2wfrm.htm
Single HTML Page	.HTM file name

Note that WordToWeb assigns default names to special pages such as the global TOC, index and frame container page. You can change the names given to these pages in the wizard dialog boxes. If you do so, then you would use your file names rather than the names given in the table above.

The default names for the special pages created by WordToWeb are as follows:

Page Type	Default File Name
Global TOC	w2wtoc.htm
Frame container page	w2wfrm.htm
Index	w2windx.htm

If the "Prefix TOC, Index and Frame file name with project name" box is checked in the TOC Options dialog box, then the file names above will be prefixed with the project name. This insures that the names are unique if more than one project is maintained in the same directory.

Making your Publication the Default Page in a Directory

If you place your publication in its own directory on your server, you may want to make the entry page the default for the directory. On most web servers, you can do this by renaming the page "index.html." This allows the end user to access the publication by typing only the path without the HTML file name. For example, the end user could type "http://mycompany.com/mypub" instead of "http://mycompany.com/mypub/w2wtoc.htm." Check with your Webmaster to be sure this technique will work on your server.

If your publication uses frames, you will want to set the frame container page (w2wfrm.htm by default) as index.html. If you are not using frames, you would probably want to set the table of contents page (w2wtoc.htm by default) to be index.html. Note that you must rename the table of contents page in the TOC Options dialog box before you run the conversion. You can’t just rename this file after the fact because your publication may contain internal links to the table of contents.