Publishing to the Web

Most Internet Service Providers include free web space with their service so that you can publish your own personal web pages. Note that you typically have to activate this feature in your account before you can use it.

Uploading a web album to your personal web space is easy with the built-in FTP (File Transfer Protocol) capability. Making a change to an already published album is just as simple (and because unmodified files are normally skipped, it is very quick).

Begin by clicking "Publish Album to Web" in the toolbar or in the Tools menu.

Step 1: Specify Connection Information

Please check your Internet Service Provider's support site for the proper FTP settings.

• Upload Server: Name of your ISP's FTP server, for example "upload.comcast.net"
• Upload Folder: Full folder path to where you want your album. By default, albums will be published in a subfolder "albums" on your personal website, so if for example your album is saved under the name MyVacation, the Upload Folder field will default to "albums/MyVacation". Some ISP's require you to prefix this with the name of your personal web space root folder name, for example "public_html/albums/MyVacation".
• Username/Password: Often the same as the username/password you use to access your email. Some ISP's give you a separate account to use for FTP access.

Step 2: Upload the Files

Click the Start button to begin the uploading, and watch the progress bar and status box to track the process. When the upload has finished, the cursor moves to the Album URL field.

If you are updating an already published album, the checkbox "Skip Unchanged Files" controls whether to upload just modified/new files (default) or to upload all files.

If for any reason you wish to interrupt the upload process, simply click the Stop button. If the upload process encounters an error, the process will stop so you can adjust the connection information and restart. Advanced users can examine the log file to see the actual FTP commands and response messages.

If you have multiple albums on your website, you may want to take advantage of the option to automatically generate a list-of-albums page. This will put an "index.htm" file in the parent folder where your album folders are located. The title of the page will be the same as the parent folder name (use the underscore character to represent a space, as folder names should not contain spaces). The page will use the same color scheme and background as your current album. You can choose to have the list sorted alphabetically or by album date (which is either the album upload date, or, if available and parseable, the Album Date field in the local copy of the albums).

To have your album include a link back to the list page, enable the "Home" footer link feature in the Options screen and set its URL to "../" or "../index.htm" (without quotes).

Step 3: Verify Album URL

The Album URL field is automatically filled in when the upload process finishes. To verify that the album was published properly, click the button "View Published Album". If the album does not appear in the browser, you may have to adjust the URL according to your ISP's guidelines.

Alternative Uploading Methods

If you encounter problems with the upload, it's a good idea to check FTP access to your personal web space using a separate FTP tool. A simple way is to just type in the upload address in Internet Explorer (for example, "ftp://upload.comcast.net"); it should prompt you for username/password, and you should then be able to see the files on your personal webspace. Internet Explorer lets you upload files and folders via simple drag-and-drop.

To publish a web album using your own favorite FTP tool, simply upload the whole folder in which you saved the album. You may skip the two files "settings.s10w" and "viewer.hta" as these are not used on the web.

To delete a published web album from your personal web space, you will have to use your own FTP tool (or Internet Explorer, as described above).