Publishing Problem - Missing File

Hi Guys

I hope you can help.

I am using Web designer V11. Recently updated a website with new pictures. www.oaklandsweddingcarhire.co.uk Previewed OK but when I publish the home screen does not load it only displays if you go into another page and then back to the home screen via the nav bar. I did raise this with the web host support team and they have told me this:

"It is trying to load the images from a folder called "home_htm_files", however, this folder is missing from your web hosting's root public_html folder. Uploading the missing folder onto your web space should sort the current problem."
Where does Webdesigner keep this file? I cant find it anywhere.

Never had this issue before and I have only added photos to the website, nothing else changed, so I am not sure why this has happened.

Thanks in advance.

Paul

The home page somehow has 'home' as file name. Go to Utilities/Web Properties/Page and change the 'Page filename' into 'index' (w/o the apostrophes), click 'Apply' and republish.

Thanks for the suggestion but checking that showed it already labelled as 'index' so I am a bit lost.

Hum, I'm not an expert but clearly you have two versions of your home page on the server, one with the extension .home and one with the extension .index. Somehow the one with the .home extension gets preference when clicking the link and should be deleted. You could do this using your web host's control panel.

If you're publishing directly from Xara, make sure you only have 'public_html' in the 'sub-folder (optional)' section of the publish settings. I'm betting heavily that that says 'home_html'.

I would also FTP or cPanel to your files and rename the 'home_html' folder, then republish your site.

Hi pcoleman11,

Are you exporting from within Xara or exporting locally and then uploading using an FTP tool (such as Filezilla)?

Xara exports your pages, and then also a folder that contains your images, CSS, JS and other elements that make your website work. This should be automatically uploaded if you publish from within Xara but can be easily missed if exported locally and then uploaded to your host.

If you are publishing from within Xara and this is happening, send me a PM and I can send you instructions on how to run a debugger alongside Xara that will capture the output and we'll be able to see what exactly is happening when publishing to your host.

Many thanks!
Rob

Either you fixed this or it is a non problem. I visited the site and everything seems to be in order.

When you update your website, make sure you refresh the page in the browser (Ctrl + F5) to force the changes to reload.

Hi Rob,

I am exporting directly from Xara. The problem seems to have been caused due to the platform loading as default the 'index.html' instead of the 'index.htm'. My Webhost company have created a .htaccess file in theweb hosting's public_html folder with the line "DirectoryIndex index.htm" and all now works.

Not sure why this would have happened when exporting from Xara. Is this likely to happen each time I change the website?

I know very little about HTML hence using Xara Web designer.

Thanks

Paul

.html takes precedence over .htm (Xara's default extension) So if there are two index files, index.html and index.htm, even though the .htm is newer the browser will always load the .html file.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gwpriester

.html takes precedence over .htm (Xara's default extension) So if there are two index files, index.html and index.htm, even though the .htm is newer the browser will always load the .html file.

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Thanks for the clarification. This might be a silly question but why would their be two index files?

Quote:

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This might be a silly question but why would their be two index files?

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Several reasons. Might be files left over from a site that was created in another program that published using the .html extension.

Or you might have published using index.html for your save as name, and then published changes and just saved as the default index which exports as index.htm

In the olden days, PC computers could not support file extensions with more than 3 characters. On the other hand the Mac could use long extensions if they wanted to.

And for whatever reason (perhaps Mac bias) the full extension took precedence over the shortened version. All browsers accept both extensions.

The best bet is to delete all the files on the server and republish your site. Then you will only have one version of the site posted.

Thanks for the explanation Gary. Really appreciate the help.

Think I will follow your advice and delete all of the files and republish.

Cheers

Paul

Gary is spot on, and I've seen it a couple of times before where users have gone to publish and replace their old site but the old site uses .html instead of .htm, and .html takes preference first.

Tip: in Xara, rename index to index.html in the Page and Layer Gallery and all pages will be exported with that extension also, if you prefer to use .html instead of .htm

Rob - Wouldn't it make sense to make this the default extension instead of htm?

Yes, I can't even remember the reason why we use .htm instead of .html... I would guess it should be a simple change but don't quote me on that, I know the HTML filter is very complicated.