VCU Technology Services

Initial Steps

To publish your departmental web site to www.vcu.edu web server, complete the following two steps first:

1. Request space on the web server by completing the Web Request Form
2. Obtain an account on the system

FrontPage

FrontPage relies on extensions placed on the server to connect and upload pages to the web server. www.vcu.edu does not support FrontPage extensions, however you can still use FrontPage to update your vcu.edu web site. The following is a modified excerpt from http://webdesign.about.com/od/frontpagehowtos/ht/htfpftpweb.htm that explains how to connect through another source in FrontPage.

1. Collect the following information:
   • Your hosting server's FTP address (www.vcu.edu) 
   • Your username (eid)
   • Your password (your server password, set separately from your eid password)
2. Go to the File menu and click "Publish Web". If you've set up other publishing schemes, click "Change".
3. Enter your hosting server's FTP address, starting with sftp://, in the "Enter publish destination" box, and click "OK".
4. Enter your username and password and click "OK". 
5. Click on "Options" and verify that everything there is correct. Then click "OK". 
6.  If you're ready to publish your site right now, click "Publish".

Note:

• If the settings ask for a path, a directory, or a remote folder enter: /www/www.vcu.edu/html/foldername (where foldername is your departmental folder)
• Make sure to use sftp not ftp. sftp indicates a secure connection.
• If you are asked for a port, use 22.

Expression Web

Expression Web has weaned itself from FrontPage extensions however if you are importing a site from FrontPage to Expression Web you will see the FrontPage extensions carried over. The following explains how to connect to the www.vcu.edu server using Expression Web:

Setting up your local Site via Expression Web

After starting Expression Web, you then need to select "New Site" from the Site drop down menu. Then complete the below form with the following information:

1. The location on you local computer where you want to store your web site 
2. Name of the Site that you are getting ready to create 

Connection Settings

Next you must set up the connection between your local computer and the remote web server, by choosing "Publishing Settings" from the Site drop down menu. Then complete the below form with the following information:

1. The Name of the connection 
2. Choose SFTP as the connection Type 
3. Enter the URL of the web server in the location field in the format of sftp://URL 
4. Enter the path to your web site which should have been emailed to you by the system administrator. 
5. Enter your user name 
6.  Enter your password

Publishing the site

After creating your files on you local computer, you finally are ready to publish them to the remote web server.

From the main window, you will

1. Click the "Publishing" link at the bottom 
2. Just to the right of the "Connect To:" box, which in your case will contain the name of your Site, click the first connection graphic. 
3. Once this has been done, you will see your local files on the left and the web server files on the right. 
4. To upload or down, you simple select the local (or remote) file and then click the connection arrow to move it to the server (or your local computer).