Website not acessible to others

[mickfr]

I built a website for our arts group and uploaded it. Initially some could
not acess it but eventually it was OK. However several members say they
cannot get the website on IE or Firefox on PCs and Macs. I have never had
problems viewing the site on my computer (IE 7.0) and most others had no
problems, earlier, either. Why would the site show initially on some
computers but not now ? Is this a fault with the website, Publisher or the
other computers ?

 

[DavidF]

You did not specify what version of Publisher you are using or provide a URL
to your site so it is difficult to help you. I will make a guess that it has
to do with a compatibility issue with IE8, and provide a boilerplate answer.
If I guessed wrong, please repost in the web design group and provide the
needed information and we will try to help you there.

news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.publisher.webdesign
or
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...soft.public.publisher.webdesign&lang=en&cr=US

-------------------------

There is a compatibility issue with IE8 and Publisher 2003 and 2007. Any
design elements that are 'grouped' together, which includes the Publisher
wizard built navbars, do not render when you view the web page in IE8 . The
fix in general is to ungroup the elements. There is both a manual fix to
these issues and a Service Patch that has been issued to fix it for Pub
2007.

Reference: Navigation bars and other content is missing from Publisher HTML
output in Internet Explorer 8: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969705

A manual method of fixing this grouping issue:

After making and saving any changes to your Pub file, and prior to uploading
new web files, make a copy of your publication by doing a 'File > Save As'
and in this copy go to each page > Edit > Select All > Arrange > Ungroup.
This will ungroup the Publisher built navbar and disconnect it from the
wizard, and the navbars will render correctly in IE8. 'Publish to the Web'
from this copy of your publication. When you want to make further changes in
your web, go back to the original Publisher file, make the corrections
there, save your changes, and again make a copy, ungroup the
navbars and produce new web files for uploading. The advantage of this
workflow is that you will not have to rebuild the navbar if you choose to
add a page to the navbar. If you do not need to add a page or section to
your site, you can leave the navbar ungrouped and skip the step of saving a
copy.

Publisher 2007 can be fixed manually or with the Office 2007 SP2:

Reference: Description of 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2)
and of Microsoft Office Language Pack 2007 SP2:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=953195

Some users have found SP2 breaks Publisher, and makes it impossible to open
existing Pub files...you know, break one thing to fix another, so there is a
hotfix for that:

Description of the Publisher 2007 hotfix package (Publisher.msp): June 30,
2009
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972566/

DavidF

 

[DavidF]

You are welcome.

Actually the links do not work correctly in FireFox. I think part of your
problem is that you have put the menu links on a Master Page. The Master
Page feature does not work correctly in a web publication. Move everything
off the Master Page and your links should then work OK in FireFox. And of
course be sure to ungroup them if you happen to have them grouped together.

Move the menu links off the Master Page and test again in FF, and you should
find the links work. If you find other cross browser incompatibilities,
please post in the web group and we will help you sort them out. In general
if you can get your site to work in both IE and FF then it will also work in
Opera, Safari and Chrome, the other major browsers.

DavidF

 

[mickfr]

I followed your advice and changed every page from "master-based" to normal
and the people who could not see it before now have no problems. Thank you
very much.

Can I pose another question ?

I just bought a wireless broadband modem to enable me to upload changes to
the website much quicker. Unfortunately, it oes not allow uploads due to the
folder being "Read Only". The modem supplier says the problem is not from
their end.
Accepting that may be true, as an alternative, would the "Foxzilla" program
be OK to upload the "index.htm" file ?

mickfr
to the site ?

 

[DavidF]

I think you mean FileZilla, and it is a good ftp client that we often
recommend. Just be sure to upload not only your index.htm file but also the
index_files folder which contain the other pages of your site along with the
supporting graphics.

the free FTP client FileZilla:
http://filezilla-project.org/ Also peruse this page (the instructions):
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/documentation/

DavidF