Cannot Edit Website (just started working at company, dealing with somone elses work)

[FlagSales]

Question: Need to know how to change prices, add new products, add new pictures. The web guy before me got fired and it does not look like I'll be getting any help from him, haha. The website is USFLAG.COM, and the shopping cart that they use is COOLCART.com.

This Is What I Tried:
1. Went to Usflag.com
2. Went to the page I needed to edit
3. View Source and copied source code into Front Page
4. Images are showing up as red x’s and error messages occur in “Preview Mode”
5. Afterwords, if that would have worked I would have uploaded the page to the net by using FTP.


I realized that coolcart uses .ASP for there site. Would this have somthing to do with it you think? Anyones help would be much appreciated.

Best Regards,
Justin :)

USFLAG.COM

[webgovernor]

Oh, the image sources are probably
"./images/xxx.gif" so you'll need to
download the images to a working
directory that has the same folder scheme.
(and you may need to add back-slashes instead due to windows being "different")

You probably won't be able to run ASP on your home PC without
selling your soul to M$...

From the sounds of it, perhaps it's time to find another, more reliable,
"web guy."

I hope that this helps... Good Luck!

[scragar]

I love your sig webgovernor.

you can't veiw the souce of the page and expet things to be honkey dory is they are .asp files, you'll have to FTP download them, then veiw the souce in a texteditor(frontpage see's the ASP <% and %> tags as invalid and "fixes" them for you).

if you ask on the ASP forum they could offer some help, but I actualy think there will be a database used on this somewhere...

[FlagSales]

Thanks for your replies and help guys,
I tried to FTP download them and stick them on our computer at work... Whenever this is done it turns an image into this...

file:///C:/US%20Flag/Web%20Pages/Flag%20Poles%20%20Aluminum%20Residential_files/pic_poleAlum_house.jpg

...which really stinks becsause i would have to go in and replace everyt little picture., Dont plan on doing that.

Now listen to this, I went to my FTP:www.usflag.com page, and put a file on my computer, the file is "aluminum_commercial". It tells me at the top of the site:

! To help protect your security, Internet Explorer has restricted this file from showing active content that could access your computer. Click here for options...

see the image at this link: http://www.usflag.com/flags/error.htm

Could this possibly be my problem of why I see the red X's? I'm going to go see whats up on the ASP forum.., as for getting a new web guy, I am the new web guy! Dont plan on getting fired yet, later.

Justin

[webgovernor]

For some reason IE blocks things like flash and some JS (I think)
when the page is run locally.

I don't know why they do that, but I'm sure there's a reason... heh.

Anyway, I think the odd url for the image links has to do with the
conversion of forward-slashes to back-slashes, or vise versa,
I wouldn't worry about the images, just edit the content that you
were trying to do, and if the urls on the uploaded page are the same as the
urls already on the net, then the images will show up fine.

Maybe you'll just need to use a real HTML editor, like notepad,
or even better jEdit, it's free and extremely good! (of course, you'll
need a JVM installed because it's a Java program.)

Well, Good Luck!

[scragar]

sounds like a classic microslop mistake, why not find out if you can see them from a real browser (http://www.mozila.org)?

[FlagSales]

Oh, the image sources are probably
"./images/xxx.gif" so you'll need to
download the images to a working
directory that has the same folder scheme.
(and you may need to add back-slashes instead due to windows being "different")


Can you please explain how to do this? Im not used to haveing to do it that way. I'm used to going into the server backend (Cpanel) and clicking on "edit file", which would be the html file. I then just upload my html there and it saves directly to the server.

Im kind of stumped. this sux..

If you guys can, please give me some advice.

Thanks,
Justin

[webgovernor]

Why don't you log into the cpanel?

It might save you some trouble.

Ok, here's what I'd do.

1) I'd look at the image source, before your wysiwyg opens them.
2) You'll probably see something like this:
"images/flag_01.jpg", so the easiest way to do this is to open
up your FTP program, and download the entire "public_http" or "http" or "html" or whatever folder (the main folder were index.html is), once that's copied,
the web-page should display normally when you open it up in
your web-browser.

EDIT: ASP won't be displayed unless you set up a web-server,
(or an expensive ASP editor [for previewing only]).

When you edit it in a wysiwyg (frontpage, dreamweaver, etc.) the image paths
will probably be changed to the directory on your hard drive (full path),
so "images/img_01.jpg" now might become "C:\usflag\public_html\images\img_01.jpg..."

Note: try to avoid putting spaces in directory names, urls then
contain "%20" in them.

Understand what I mean?

So, there's probably an option in your wysiwyg that says something like
"patial directory paths" then you can change it to say partial paths so
thw wysiwyg doesn't mess up you folder system when you upload it.

Also, I'd recomend taking the "total control" approach, and using a text editor,
instead of a wysiwyg. Like jEdit http://www.jedit.org it's free and powerful!

I hope that helps you Justin.

I'm still confused on what you're trying to do, edit the
images or edit the content? Because if it's just the text-based content,
then you should probably just edit that in a text-editor, leave the images
alone, and when you upload it, the only thing to change wil be your
text-content (articles)...

Well, good luck!

[FlagSales]

Why don't you log into the cpanel?


That is only on my website (www.sneakerbase.com). My server company uses that and I am pretty used to it. I dont think the company I'm working for (www.usflag.com) has Cpanel, I wish they did.


When you edit it in a wysiwyg (frontpage, dreamweaver, etc.) the image paths will probably be changed to the directory on your hard drive (full path),
so "images/img_01.jpg" now might become "C:\usflag\public_html\images\img_01.jpg..."


This is the exact thing I'm trying to avoid and my main problem. Whenever I copy and paste the website into my wysiwyg (frontpage) and then save it to the harddrive, it turns all images into ("C:\usflag\public_html\images\img_01.jpg..." My goal is to save that file to the hard drive and all images sources remain to be "www.usflag.com/images/img_01.jpg" so that I can simply grab the file from my harddrive and upload to the site through FTP.


Note: try to avoid putting spaces in directory names, urls then
contain "%20" in them.

Understand what I mean?


Yes, I will stop doing that.


So, there's probably an option in your wysiwyg that says something like
"patial directory paths" then you can change it to say partial paths so
thw wysiwyg doesn't mess up you folder system when you upload it.


This could possibly be my problem., but i wonder where that option is in frontpage?, I will try and find it. I'm also questioning that it might not be it either.., even if I copy the source code of a page from my site into notepad and save it as .HTML it still makes all images C:\\ images.

Now check this out,
I noticed that when I create a site from scratch in frontpage and paste images from the web into the page and then save them to my computer, they do not turn into C: drive images. I can open it up later and it still sees all the images from the web. It’s only when I save a website from the internet to my hard drive I get that C: drive image problem.

any more suggestions would be great!

thanks,
Justin

www.usflag.com

[webgovernor]

Hmmm...

Oh, maybe if the images included "http://" infront of
the www.usflag.com/images/img.jpg???

I've never used frontpage, but, well, maybe it's in a help section or
something?

One thing could be that if you have a live internet connection, then it should be fine.
but if it's dialup, when it's disconected the images will no longer be
accessed on the web, so perhaps the paths are automatically changed
to the image cache?

I really don't know.

I'll see what I can find.

Well, good luck, and sorry I wasn't of more help.

[FlagSales]

This is what someone said to me in another part of this forum. I've also think I have it figured out now.. By the way, we have DSL that is always online., here.. take a look at what this guy wrote and click on my link to see if you think i'm heading in the right direction with this.




Originally Posted by grailquester5
Justin,
Have you considered FTP-ing the entire site to your computer to work on it there?



Yes I have, I believe that is what I need to do since the whole site is built in HTML with a couple of Javascripts here and there. I believe I’ve finally figured out my problem. If you could please correct me if I’m wrong with these steps.

Click link to see steps:
http://www.usflag.com/Justin/instructions.htm

If I’m right or wrong please suggest what I should do. Thanks a lot for your help.

Thanks,
Justin O’Neill

www.usflag.com

[webgovernor]

The FTP-ing thing,
that's what I meant with copying the
public_html directory to your computer.

SO, yes, I think it is a good idea.

Just copy it over. That's what I do with all of my sites.

Hope that you did figure it out.

And your steps looks good. Frontpage > FTP > etc.

Good Luck!

[poiuy]

Why not use the 'Open Web' feature in Frontpage? It will log you into your site live. It will create a folder in your webfolders where you can upload thing to your site without "FTP".

Then you won't have to worry about it assigning things to your hard drive. The only pics you can add are the ones in your site.

Usually (unless you host has other setting) you just put in the full website address and the you'll get a prompt asking you for the user name and password.

Once you're in be careful because when you hit save on a page it will update live onto your website. Save as... to another name if you want to test something before going live.

I know there are a lot of Frontpage bashers out there but this is one of it's best features.

[FlagSales]

Thanks everyone for your help, I just have to contact my server company to get a few permissions changed so that I can start editing this thing.., I still keep on getting this error message that I showed everyone in my instructions..

http://www.usflag.com/Justin/instructions.htm

[poiuy]

Yeah you need the server to enable the Frontpage extensions (or reinstall them) That is one of the drawbacks to Frontpage.

If you can get into the webhost control panel you may be able to install them yourself without waiting for them.

[FlagSales]

Alright!, finally working...

I kept on getting the same error message, then i called my server guy. He said that I had all FTP restrictions lifted already and that there should not be any problems?? I told him that couldnt be right. It's wierd, he said he did not have to change anything but whenever i called him and told him about the problem and then came back to my computer dissapointed and really confused, it worked to my surprise. Im not complaining or anything, just dont know how it suddently started working. As long as its working now... maybe he reinstalled them to get it to work and did not know that he was actually fixing the problem??

Anyways.., thanks again for all of you helping me get this issue resolved.

Best Regards,
Justin O'Neill

www.usflag.com