Publish Section

Overview

The Publish Section contains properties that are used by the Family History Hosting > Publish command to automate the publishing process for Family History Hosting customers.

The Publish command removes the guesswork from maintaining the public version of your site. It keeps track of which files need to be replaced, and avoids transferring large images that have not changed. It compresses the HTML files in the main folder of the site into one or more ZIP files, and transfers the ZIP files in order to reduce FTP overhead. The result is a faster, more reliable upload process that is easier to use than manual methods.

Family History Hosting customers receive an email message that indicates how to set the properties below. Please refer to that message when setting these properties.

FHH Server ID

The FHH Server ID indicates the Family History Hosting server where your web site files reside.

Upload Method

The Upload Method property controls which method Second Site will use to upload the main HTML files for the web site. The default is Compressed Archive, a method where Second Site compresses the files and uploads them via ZIP files. This reduces the communication overhead but requires special support on the server. For large sites where there is not enough disk space to upload the archive files, choose the File by File method instead.

FTP Server

The FTP Server is the host name used for the FTP (file transfer) processing. The FTP Server's host name is "ftp." followed by your domain name. So, for example, if your domain was "example.com", enter "ftp.example.com" in the FTP Server property.

User Name

Enter the Control Panel ("cPanel") User Name that was assigned to you when you signed up for the Family History Hosting service.

Password

Enter the Control Panel ("cPanel") Password that was assigned to you when you signed up for the Family History Hosting service. If you have changed the password, enter the current value.

The password is not displayed in Second Site, but the password is stored in "plain text" (human readable) in the SDF file. If you do not want to enter the password, leave it blank. Second Site will prompt you for the password when it needs it.

SubFolder

If the current SDF file defines the contents for a subfolder on your site, enter the name of that folder.

If you enter the name of a folder that does not exist, Second Site will prompt you during the upload process and ask if you want to create it.

Do not enter "www" or "public_html" to indicate the main folder. The main folder is not a subfolder: leave the SubFolder property empty to update the main folder.

Usage Notes

Second Site optimizes the upload process by:

Uploading a compressed archive of files in the main Output folder.
Uploading only changed files in subfolders of the main Output folder.

To get the most out of these optimization steps, make sure that most if not all of the images used on the site are stored in subfolders. For exhibits, set Exhibits.Output folder to Child of output folder. Store images used with the Picture User Item in a subfolder of the Input folder.

When Second Site uploads a file that is in a subfolder of the Output folder, it records the file date and file size in an "upload status" file. During all subsequent uploads, Second Site compares the file size and file date of the current version of the file to the last version that it uploaded. If either value has changed, or if Second Site has not uploaded the file before, it will upload the file. Otherwise, it skips the file because the current version is already on the server.

The upload status file is stored in the same folder as the SDF file, and it has the same name except for the suffix "-files". If your SDF file is "MySite.sdf", the upload status file is "MySite-files.xml".

If you rename the SDF file, or move it, you'll break the connection between the upload status file and the SDF file, and Second Site won't know if the file has been uploaded before, or what version of the file was uploaded. That will trigger a re-upload of all the files.