Testing server
Server model - ASP VBScript
Access - Local/Network
Testing Server Folder - C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\debtorstocash\
URL Prefix: http://localhost/debtorstocash/

Is this ok and what should be in HTTP address?
http://www.debtorstocash.com ?

MAy be u have enabled using port
for example:http://localhost:8280/Dir

Hi,

Thanks for that. I think http://localhost/debtorstocash/ in the Testing Server set up is ok because I can brows to my home page in Internet Expl.

But I have left http:// blank in the Local info?

Should this be http:// http://www.debtorstocash.com?

Leonard P.O'Grady
Whitsundays
Australia

It can't be an actual website URL unless you actually have that domain hosted on your personal machine.

Surely you aren't going to do that???? It exposes you to all the nasties of the internet. Every possible virus attack will be directed at you.

I see that your site's nameservers are westnethosting.com.au so I would assume that you will be hosting the site with them?? So you will have to "publish" your site to their servers. I think that DW will do that for you, or you can just use FTP from Windows Explorer to do it.

You know, you ought to at least put up a "placeholder" web page on the server. Even if you aren't ready to upload the entire site.

Hi again,

I agree that was not my intention, I am going to host with westnet. So I should have the testing server set up the same as the remote site set up?

You can't really.

On your production site with westnet, if you were to use a URL staring with a slash, as in
That would mean "starting at the root of your site, look for the directory images."
So the effective URL would be Whereas if you use that same URL on your testing machine, the effective URL becomes whereas of course what you *really* wanted was It's one of the major problems with developing on an XP/Vista box instead of on a real Windows Server box; you can't properly emulate a live site.

Oh, you *can* do it, by using just the bare bones as the location for all your files. Meaning that you put your actual files into the c:\inetpub\wwwroot directory, directly, and not into a sub-directory.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that if you consistently use *relative* paths (e.g., "../images/pix.jpg") then they work both places.

In short, if it works on you test machine, it will more than likely work on the production box.

But not necessarily. Once in a while you will get "bitten". But that is why you test not only on your home box but also test test test test on the production box.

Does that help at all?

Forgot to say...

And the reason you don't want to install your test site directly at c:\inetpub\wwwroot is that (if you are like me) that's where you are developing several other tests and sites and demos.

But if that directory is "clean" and available to you, it really is the best place to emulate a Windows Server production machine. Now all your paths--even the ones starting with a slash--will work.

By the by, I don't mean to make you nervous about this. I have 15 different sites that I work on, and the "test" locations for them are scattered all over my development box. Yet it is very very rare that I have a "path" problem when I upload them to the production servers. Just try to avoid absolute paths and you'll be fine.

Hi,

Once again thanks for that, I am only working on my own business site so I do have a clean inetpub to host the test server. I do not know if you noticed I had a number of posts under different topics, the site definition questions I asked was to check if they were interfering with my dsn less Access database connection. Still working on that.

What I did want to ask you though, you touched on FTP upload to westnet. I did have the site uploaded, I just copied and pasted from my browser to the remote wwwroot folder via my MS Internet Explorer. Westnet did not reccomend this although it did work. They reccomended dowloading their ftp program or editing through a net based ftp program.

I wanted to have my site defination correct and then use the FTP put button. Problem is every time I try Dreamweaver crashes!

Any thoughts

Leonard P.O'Grady
Whitsundays
Australia

Hi Leonard,

Might be an obvious question, but did you install the latest service releases for Dreamweaver?

Imar

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I'm not a fan of DreamWeaver. To the point that I call it names (DreadWhacker, DeadWasher, DumbWaster). It produces bloated code; it produces just plain BAD code; it gets in your way if you try to do something it doesn't understand.

Having said all that...

No reason it should crash just because you tried to use it to upload to your site.

ANYWAY...

I have 15 different sites that I work with, and I used to use various FTP products, when most of them were free. But for the last couple of years, I've just used Windows Explorer as my FTP client, and it works quite well enough for me. The only annoyance is that when you upload a new version of a file, Explorer will show you both the old file and newly uploaded one...even thought the old one is gone. But just remember to hit refresh occasionally and all is well. Only reason not to use it that I can see: It can't recover from a failed connection and resume where it left off. The better FTP products out there can do that.

On the other hand, I download 200MB Access ".mdb" files all the time without crashing, so do I really care?