Step 1 Downloading your website to your computer.
Before you can edit your website you should have a full copy of your website on your computer.
You will first need to create a folder on your computer to store your copy of the website. This is usually at My Documents\My Webs\yourwebsitename.com. To create a folder in My Documents right click on My Documents and then left click on Explore, in the left column click on the folder in which you wish to create the new folder, then click on the file menu - New - folder and rename "New Folder" as appropriate.
You will need to download your website from our web server to your computer with a File Transfer Program (FTP). Almost any FTP program will do, but we use Globalscape's CuteFTP. You can download various versions of CuteFTP from the download pages of this website. Each of the versions available on this website is quite adequate for your purposes, but if you wish to have a more advanced version, these are available at the Globalscape website.
After downloading CuteFTP you should set it up in accordance with the instructions shown on you "Welcome" email. Please pay particular attention to the default remote directory setting. For a full domain website this should be "../../web" and for an editable sub-domain website this should be "web".
The default local directory is the place on your computer where your website is going to be stored - (usually My Documents\My Webs\yourwebsitename.com).
If you have set things up correctly, when you first connect to your website with CuteFTP (you must be on-line to the Internet), in the two main windows (left & right) you will see a blank window on the left and a list of directories and files on the right. The left window is the website on your computer and the right window is the website on the server.
You should select (Ctrl A) all the files and directories in the right window. When anything in the right window is selected the download icon (arrow pointing down) becomes active. When you click on the download icon all the selected files are downloaded from the server to your computer. You will see various files moving about the top and bottom windows during the download. When the bottom window is empty and the left and right windows are the same the download is complete.
When you have finished downloading you should disconnect from the server (3rd icon from left) before closing down CuteFTP. If you do not follow the disconnection process and wish to reconnect within 20 minutes you may have problems with the server assuming you are still connected and locking out further connections until it has refreshed (every 20 minutes).

Step 2 Excluding files from publishing.
You must stop FrontPage automatically publishing certain files on your website. This is covered in detail in it's own section of this website please click HERE to go to this section.

Steps 1 & 2 only need to be done once - all subsequent editing can be done starting with Step 3

Step 3 Preparing and saving your image files in the images directory of your website.
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR THE CORRECT FUNCTIONING OF YOUR WEBSITE - UNLESS YOU HAVE A BETTER METHOD OF PRODUCING SMALL FILE SIZES FOR YOUR IMAGES PLEASE FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW EXACTLY - DO NOT USE IMAGES DIRECTLY FROM YOUR CAMERA OR SCANNER.
Images used on a website are usually .gif or .jpg format. Gif images are used for man made images, such as logos etc, where there is a limited number of colours present. Amongst other features, .gif images can have an irregular shaped mask and can be moving images. Jpegs (.jpg) are generally used for photographs as they have a much wider colour range.
Photographs are usually scanned or downloaded (from a digital camera) and always require preparation for use on a website. This preparation must be done in a photo editing program and not in FrontPage.
The formula I use for photographic image preparation is as follows:-
1. ensure the photo is cropped to what you want to show.
2. resample the image to the size you require - I generally use a maximum of 380 pixels in any direction (horizontally or vertically)- the DPI doesn't really matter but for uniformity I always set it to 100dpi.
3. carry out any adjustment to tone / colour etc as necessary.
4. save the image as a .jpg in the images directory of your website - I generally use a compression of 50 and if smoothing is available to you I would suggest you set this to 10. Using these settings you should be able to achieve a file size of less than 20kb. Please do NOT use uppercase letters or spaces in the file name.
5. when putting the image in your page do NOT adjust the size as this will produce a poor image, adjustment for size should be carried out as in item 3 above.
IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND ANY OF STEP 3 PLEASE CONTACT OUR HELPDESK

Step 4 Opening your website in FrontPage.
You should almost always open your web in FrontPage, rather than opening individual files. Individual files are edited, within FrontPage, with the web open. You can either click on the file menu and then on Open Web, or click on the Open Web icon to open your website in Front Page. Please be sure that you open yourwebsitename.com and not My Webs.

Step 5 Editing your website in FrontPage.
NOTE Tutorials on the use of FrontPage 2000 & 2002 are available on our download page. A series of free on-line training courses on the use of FrontPage 2003 is available from Microsoft at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/CR061832701033.aspx.
Please do not edit or delete the file oldindex.html - this is your instructions and link to the control panel of your virtual server. Also, unless you are sure you know what you are doing, do not edit the file index.htm in the root directory of your website. The homepage of your website is indexm.htm, the other pages should have self explanatory names.
Once you have familiarised yourself with FrontPage by using the tutorials you should be ready to edit your website. Please look at how things are already done and laid out to give you guidelines to how you should proceed. Some general tips are:
Always use tables to put text in columns or alongside images.
Do NOT use multiple spaces to format text - there are other formatting tools available.
Always remember that other people are likely to be viewing your website on a screen that is set differently to yours (larger or smaller).

Step 6 Checking your website before publishing.
When you have finished editing your website it is a good idea to preview your website in the browser (Internet Explorer) before you publish as you can pick up most errors this way before someone else sees them.
In FrontPage, with your web open, close all other files (after saving them) and open index.htm, then click on the "Preview in Browser" icon (to the right of the print icon). This will open the website on your computer and it will look almost exactly like it will when published. Some things, such as the hit counter and the guestbook script will not work (they only work on the server).
Fully check out your website before you publish your website. If you find errors, correct them in FrontPage and keep checking your website until you are sure it is error free.

Step 7 Publishing your website.
If you are not using FrontPage or your website does not have FrontPage server extensions enabled, you must use your FTP program to copy your changed files back to your website. All of our full domain website and some of our editable sub-domain website have FrontPage server extensions enabled (unless you have specifically requested that they are not enabled).
Publishing directly from FrontPage is generally very easy. (You must be 0n-line - connected to the Internet). With your web open, either go to the File menu then Publish Web or click on the Publish Web icon.
The first time you publish you will be asked for the full address to publish this must be your will website address starting with http://www.
You will next be asked for your username and password - this was given to you on your "Welcome" email - for a full domain website the username will be different to your FTP or Email username.
The first time you publish FrontPage will re-publish your whole website, but on subsequent publishing, unless someone publishes your website from a different computer, only the changed items will be published.
When FrontPage has completed publishing it will bring up a message box stating that it has successfully published your website and asking you to view your published website. It is always a good idea to view your website immediately after publishing as a final check that all is as you intended. You sometimes have to click on refresh (sometimes repeatedly) in your browser to view the updated pages.
If you have problems publishing, particularly if you get a message saying that FrontPage server extensions are not enabled, it is usually a slow or bad connection to the Internet issue. In this circumstance it is quite a good idea to close down FrontPage completely, wait a minute or two, maybe re-connect to the Internet, re-open your web in FrontPage and re-publish.

Step 8 Congratulate yourself.
Hopefully by the time you have got to this stage your website has been successfully published exactly as you wanted.
If this is not the case please go back and review this procedure. If this does not help then please ask us for help - email: helpdesk@eqwebs.com - Telephone (+44) 08700 119034.