Using WebAccess to upload

Introduction

WebAccess is a web site that gives the online media team and University web authors access to a collection of software tools. These tools allow you to perform a range of operations on your site(s) and the files within them. Depending on your access rights to your site, WebAccess enables you to view site information and server statistics, upload files from the development server to the live site, generate site navigation, generate a site or pages within a site from a navigation structure, manage user access to a site or create a CD of a site.

The advantage of using WebAccess is that it allows you access to all the tools that you may need to maintain your site without having to know how to run programs on unix or even log into the development server.

WebAccess is accessed at the URL: http://webdev.adelaide.edu.au/webaccess .

Users are required to log in to WebAccess using LDAP user ID and password. WebAccess uses the log in information to determine the sites that a user has permission to work on. Log in details are shown at the top right hand corner of the window on all pages within the site.

Selecting a Site and Viewing Site Information

Most WebAccess functions are performed on an individual site. If you have access to more than one site, select the appropriate site from the list of sites to which you have access.

The site information for your site will then be displayed and you may choose to perform a number of operations on the site. Information available from this page includes: the physical path of the site on the web servers, the virtual host under which the site is located and the URLs for the development and production versions of the site.

When you are in the Site Information page, the navigation menu expands to allow you to perform additional operations on your site.

In addition, there is a submit request entry field that allows you to perform operations on your site. For more information on this see the Submit Requests section below.

Server Statistics

If server statistics are collected for this site, which is determined by a set up option, then a link on the Site Information page will be active. Clicking on this link will take you to the server statistics for the currently selected site. Information is available in a number of different reports. For more information on the statistics, click on the Analog – What the results mean link at the top of the statistics page.

Submit Requests

Submitting a request to the server will automatically run a program on the development server within a set period of time, usually two minutes.

The operations you are able to run depend on your access to the site and also on how the site is set up. This is how you can upload a site or pages within a site from the development server to the production server enabling the pages to be viewed by the outside world. Also, you can generate navigation or set up sites or pages based on the structure defined in navigation files for the site or create a CD of the whole site.

The same operations take place whether you submit a request from the Submit Requests page or from the Submit Requests box on the Site Information page. The most frequently used of these operations are discussed below.

Upload

The upload facilities in WebAccess are the only way that University web authors can access the production (live) web server. There are no user accounts on the production web server so all changes are made to a site, or files within a site, on the development server and then uploaded to the production server using WebAccess once you are satisfied with the changes. The WebAccess upload functions upload files, including web pages, images and navigation files from the development server to the live University web site.

There are several ways in which this can be done within WebAccess. Several of these methods are batch operations that will upload all changed files at once. This is useful if you are the only person working on the site and so you know that only the pages you have been working on have changed. However, if a number of people work on your site, you must take care not to submit a batch upload when other people have changes that they are not ready to upload to the live site.

To avoid problems with uploading pages that are not ready to be viewed in the live site, it is safest to use Site Files to perform an upload if you are not sure which pages have changed. This allows you to ensure that only the appropriate files are uploaded to the live server.

Upload Site Files Request

From the Submit Requests page or the submit requests entry box on the Site Information page, selecting the option to Upload Site files will upload all files that have changed since the last time a batch upload was run for the selected site. The production site will therefore be brought into line with the version of the website on the development site and the date and time stamp for when the last batch upload was performed is updated. This function operates on all files within the currently selected site, but ignores subsites within the site.

Upload Site and Subsites Request

If a site has no subsites, this operation is identical to the Upload Site Files. If a site has one or more subsites, this function will upload any changed files within the currently selected site and all of its subsites, bringing the development and production versions of the current site and all of its subsites into line. This resets the date and time stamp for when the last batch upload was performed.

As with the Upload Site Files function, this operation can be run from either the Submit Requests page or the submit requests entry box on the Site Information page.

Uploading Individual Site Files

Select Site Files from the expanded site navigation. This will provide a summary of all files within the currently selected site and a full list of all files within the site. By default, the full list will show files of all types sorted in reverse modification time order, that is, the most recently changed file will be shown first in the list.

Any files shown with the modification date and time shown in red have changed since the last site upload. One or more of these files may be uploaded to the live site.

If all of the files shown in red, that is all files that have changed since the last upload, are ready to be uploaded to the production server, then the best option is to scroll down to the bottom of the file list and select the option to Upload Modified . This performs the same operation as the submit request to Upload Site Files , but has the added advantage that you are aware which files are being uploaded. Therefore the production site is brought into line with the development site and the date and time stamp for the upload is reset.

If you do not want to upload all of the changed files, whose change date and time are shown in red, select the individual files to be uploaded by placing a check in the selection box next to the relevant files. When all the files to be uploaded have been ticked scroll down to the end of the file list and click on the option to Upload Selected . The selected files will then be uploaded to the server. Note that the upload date and time stamp is not reset as the individual file upload has not synchronized the files on the production and development servers.

Upload your pages

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