Converting Your Site To GoLive

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FrontPage Notes:

When your FrontPage site's files appear in the Files tab of the Site Window, you'll see some folders that begin with an underscore. Those are folders that were invisible to you from within FrontPage, but were actually there all along. Go ahead and delete the empty ones. As for any files that reside in the other such folders, you'll need to make a decision about what to do with each, depending upon their use within your site.
If you're moving a site from FrontPage to the Mac, you may find some long file names truncated in GoLive. They'll appear so in the Site Window. GoLive makes it easy to rename files, so you should be able to fix these up easily.

So What Happens Behind the Scenes?

After you make your final selection in the wizard, GoLive looks at your site's files and creates a Site Document and GoLive folder structure to reflect it, placing these items in the folder you created to contain your site. You don't see this happening, but GoLive creates the following files, as shown here:

yoursitesname.site: the actual files that were in your folder. As you work, adding style sheets, media, pages, etc., they will reside here, as well.
yoursitesname.data: a newly-created folder that will house any Components, Library Items, etc. that you may create later as you work on your site. All folders that appear in the right (hidden) side of the Site Window are physical folders located here.
yoursitesname.settings: a newly-created folder that contains some of the information you set within your site.
yoursitesname.site: a single file that tracks your entire site. When you double-click this document, called the Site Document, it opens up to become the Site Window: your GoLive site's interface.
yoursitesname backup.site: a backup of your Site Document.

What the folders look like on your hard drive using DreamWeaver

What the folders look like on your hard drive using FrontPage

But What About FrontPage Code?

If you're using FrontPage, you're aware that it's big on proprietary code and creates a bunch of folders and files that work only in FrontPage. If your pages look fine in the browser when you preview them from within the GoLive Site Window, you don't necessarily have to worry about that code within your page. However, when you decide you want that stuff gone, there's a special extension made just for GoLive that'll do the job for you and even report what it has done.

All you have to do (after you install it) is open each FrontPage-created html page by double-clicking it in the Files tab, and choose Special > Clean Up HTML > Front Page. From there, by clicking More Options, you'll have the option to "upgrade" or "remove" any of 13 FrontPage code issues.

Adobe-Provided Conversion Help

The GoLive CD includes more details on the FrontPage file and code issue. You'll find this information inside a folder called Featured Extensions.

Deborah Shadovitz is a Mac user-turned-specialist, who also designs Web sites. Among other things she teaches and writes about GoLive.

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If you have questions, or have discovered a few tricks along the way, please post them here.
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cgi-bin?
2002-08-24 07:42:43 sssss1 [Reply | View]

I've got a very scripted site I'd like to manage with GoLive if it can handle the cgi-bin as well. The server is running Apache on OS X, and there's a Documents folder and the CGI-Executables folder.

Can I get all of this into a GoLive Site without it mangling uploads and links?

Thanks, Scott