Complete Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Using Netshare
Chapter 2 About Web Server Publishing
Chapter 3 Installing and Configuring
Chapter 4 Web Publisher Quickstart
Chapter 5 Services and Menus
Chapter 6 Search
Chapter 7 Access Control
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Chapter 4 Web Publisher QuickStart

Web Publisher lets server clients directly access, edit, and manage files and folders on remote servers. In this way, multiple users can collaborate on shared workgroup web server documents from their desktops.

This chapter focuses on a few of the most common tasks to get you up and running as quickly as possible. Other chapters describe the Web Publisher services and menu commands in detail. This chapter discusses these topics:

The search and access control components of Web Publisher are discussed in other chapters. For search, see Chapter 6, "Using Search." For access control, see Chapter 7, "Controlling Access."

Note
Web Publisher provides many internal and automatic features such as file reindexing and state checking. If you use your local file management tools to manipulate files and folders in the document directory defined for Web Publisher, you may get inconsistent and unexpected results.


Using the Web Publisher Interface
When you start up Web Publisher, you see the server documents and folders displayed in a window that hierarchically lists all files and folders, as shown in Figure 4.1. There are several icons that provide information about a given file or folder.

Figure 4.1    The Web Publisher window

 Web Publisher Icons
As files undergo different operations, Web Publisher displays different icons in the Web Publisher window. Files that you have edited but haven't yet published have a distinctive pen icon. Locked files also have special icons that differ depending on whether you or another user is the lock owner. Table 4.1 shows the icons and their meanings.

Table 4.1 File icons for different operations

Operation
Icon
(no operation)


edited by you


locked by you


locked by another user


When a file that is being edited is published back to the server, the pen icon disappears. Likewise, when files that have been locked are unlocked, the lock icon or the circle icon disappears.

Sorting the Listed Files and Folders
You can choose to sort the files and folders in different ascending or descending sort sequences: by name, modification date, or size.

To sort the files, click the heading for the column you want to sort by. Alternately, you can go to the View menu and choose the Sort command, selecting the appropriate sort sequence from the submenu (name, date, or size).

Keyboard Shortcuts
Web Publisher uses many standard keyboard actions:

Toolbar Shortcuts
At the top of the Web Publisher file management window, the toolbar presents seven buttons as shortcuts for the most commonly used Web Publisher commands, as shown in Figure 4.2. The complete set of menu commands are described in Chapter 5, "Services and Menus."

Figure 4.2    The toolbar

You can select a file or folder and use a toolbar button to execute a Web Publisher command. From left, the icons are:


Editing a Server File
This section describes how to edit a file stored on a remote web server and publish the modified file back to the server so that it is available for other users. When you edit a file, it becomes locked to other users until you have published it.

With Web Publisher, you can edit any unlocked file that you have read and write permission for. Members of a workgroup often need to be able to make changes to shared files on a remote server as they collaborate on a project.

To edit a file:

  1. Select an unlocked file.

  2. Click the Edit toolbar button.

  3. Click OK to launch the file's editor application and begin editing the file.

  4. When you have made your changes, save the file in the editor application. If you are using the HTML editor in Netscape Navigator 3.01, do not use its Publish command.
The newly edited file is not available on the server for other users until you publish it. To publish an edited file to the server:

  1. Select the edited file.

  2. From the File menu, choose the Publish an Edited File command. The Publish File dialog box appears.

  3. Click OK to publish the file.
The edited file is again available on the server and Web Publisher unlocks the file.


Adding a New File to the Server
Another common task is to add a new file to the server by uploading a local file. Whether the file is an application, a word processing document, a PDF file, a spreadsheet, or an HTML file—you can add it to the server with Web Publisher.

To move one of your local files onto the server, do the following:

  1. In the Web Publisher window, select the folder where you want to place your new file.

  2. From the File menu, choose the Upload to Server menu command. The Upload File or Folder dialog box appears.

  3. In the Upload Local File or Folder field, type the full pathname of your local file. If you are using Communicator, you can click the Browse button to look for the file on your local system.

  4. Your destination folder's pathname appears in the To Server File or Folder field. You can also change the destination that appears.

  5. You can lock a file when you put it on the server by checking the "Lock files after upload" option. The default is not to lock files.

  6. Click Upload to add your local file to the server.

  7. A dialog box is displayed asking you to update the file properties for this file. Click OK to go to the Web Publisher Services page with the Properties for this file.
Viewing a File's Information
You can view a file's default and custom properties from the Web Publisher Services page.

Figure 4.3    The Web Publisher Services page

File Properties
There are two types of file properties: default and custom properties. Each Web Publisher file has a set of default properties, and these are displayed when you click the Properties link. You can only modify the owner of a file, and then only if you are the assigned owner or the file has no owner. Your server administrator can also define some custom properties and these are displayed when you click the Custom Properties link. You can enter your own values for any property that has been designated as modifiable by your server administrator.

Default Properties
To see the default properties, follow these steps:

  1. Select a file from the Web Publisher window.

  2. Click the Information toolbar button or choose the Properties command from the View menu. The Web Publisher Services form is displayed with the file's properties page visible.

  3. If the file's properties are not visible, click the Properties link to display them.
Files have the set of default properties listed here. Folders have only two modifiable properties, Description and Owner, and four read-only properties: Filename, URL, Size, and Modified. Also see Chapter 5, "Services and Menus," for information about properties.

You can perform a search on any property as well as on any searchable file contents. For example, you can search for all files that belong to a certain author, for all the locked files, or for any file with a particular string in the title field. For more information about doing searches, see Chapter 6, "Using Search."

Custom Properties
To see the default properties, follow these steps:

  1. Select a file from the Web Publisher window.

  2. Click the Information toolbar button or choose the Properties command from the View menu. The Web Publisher Services form is displayed with the file's properties page visible.

  3. Click the Custom Properties link. A list of properties with their current values is displayed.
 

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