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I have several clients, but none of them maintains their own site, except for one other client who uses FrontPage and we never have this problem.
I just recently transferred his site/hosting to me from another web company and he claims he's only had trouble since the switch. I'm guessing it's because they only hosted his site and never edited anything in it.
He's done this five times in one week now.He'll make changes and then publish, overwriting what I've done.
How can i explain to him how to publish without doing this? What I've told him is that he needs to 'get' the remote files with his FP program so that he doesn't overwrite my files, and so that he loads the most recent pages from the server. Then he opens the page he wants to edit, saves and publishes. if this is right, how do i explain to him how to do that?
Should he and I be setting the site to 'synchronize' in FP and DW?
Your help is appreciated!
I think my client is doing that - when he publishes his page his mistakes are live, when he emailed me again that he had done this, I checked his index.htm page and sure enough, all of his images were gone (have no idea why this is happening), and the changes I previously made were overwritten.
Any ideas on how to explain to him how to publish without overwriting the remote files?
I think my client is doing that
From what you say, I don't think so.
If he is 'publishing' that generally means he is making changes in a web on his local machine, which is NOT synchronised with the one on the server since you have made changes to that.
Then he 'publishes' the changes, thus messing up what you have done.
To work on a web live, he needs to open the actual site on the server and make changed there. He can do this by doing, in FP, File > Open Web and typing [hisdomain.com...] into the Web Name field of the dialogue box that opens.
He will be prompted for his username and password, and then the site will open from the server. He can make changes, save them and will NOT have to publish, since it is already on the server.
That should work.
Another option if you only make very occasional changes is to have him publish the live web back to his machine, so that he can work offline but with a current version of the web.
To do this procede as above, and when the web is open do File > Publish Web and enter a destination on his machine to publish to.
The problem would occur whetther or not the Front Page & Dreamweaver scenario existed.
Keep a clear idea of there the latest copy is, it is on the web live. You write a new page and publish that, then your client on a different machine writes newchanges to the page, he does not have the corrections you made on his machine, and when he publishes overwrites your changes
I am not certain as to any conflict between Dream Weaver and Front page, but you could try getting your client to synchronise before even starting to make any changes on their machine. That way they have the latest copy that you have put there. They then make changes to the latest copy, and upload it in the normal way.
Similarly you would have to do this as well to avoid obliterating any changes your client makes
Truth to tell it is a recipe for disaster having two of you making changes to one web site (and with different software as a bonus)
So the easiest thing, fight fire with fire. How many websites do you update a week? I am sure it is a lot more than your client. Overwrite his a couple of times and see if that works. Yeah I know, but it helped me with one client. I did this once after he overwrote about three hours of work just on one page.
Of course, if you charge for everything, then when you invoice him, make sure to write all of that down as well. The client also got that that month as well.
And he has not over-written anything since
-Corey
It is the developers brief surely to provide the client with a site they can safely update, if that is what they wish to do.
If the developer has failed to provide that, punishing the client does not seem a very productive, helpful or professional approach.
I work on my site live on the server because it is 25,000 pages big, and it doesn't make sense to publish.
When he opens FrontPage, and he clicks on "File" in the top menu, then scrolls down to "Open Web" a dialogue box opens. Instead of clicking on "History" or "My Documents" (which he probably does), he needs to click on "My Network Places"...
If he has ever worked on his site "live" before, it will show in the white space in the middle. If not, he will have to type it in the blank space at the bottom called "web name"....
I think he may have to put in http:// etc...but maybe just the www.webname.com (or whatever).
That is when the dialogue box opens where he enters his user name and password, allowing him to work on the site live.
This has been most informative .......however, when I tried to open the webpage through File>Open Web> and entered my username and password, the page did not open :(
It says the folder is not accessible.
What could be going wrong?
