Customizing the site settings in Expression Web

Customizing the site settings in Expression Web

Hi Guys, It's my pleasure to find you reading this article and this is what helps me to bring to you the easiest and intricate concept of the technology so that whatever you learn from here not only becomes sufficient enough for you to acquire significant knowledge of the technology but also understand it thoroughly that's what is the motive behind bring up articles for you.

So let's move on to work, In my last article you came across how to create a simple website in Expression Web using predefined templates and In this article you will learn how to customize the settings of the site we created in the last article. Follow the steps below

Step 1 : Go to the Open site tool in the toolbar and select open site.

Step 2 : Now as soon as you click on the open site tool a window as shown below appears and alas!! what you see is the list of sites you have created so far. In this window it shows only the site that we have created in the last article and hence we select the site named "mysite".

Step 3 : Now as you have selected the site the page named "site view" opens up and it shows all the files and folders used in the site. It basically opens the contents of the entire site selected.

Step 4 : After the site contents are displayed on the page or you can say on selecting the site to which the changes in the setting are to be applied. go to the "Site" menu bar and select "site setting".

Step 5 : Selecting the site setting opens up the widow with four modes of changing the site setting. These modes are :

1. General

2. Preview

3. Advance

4. Publishing

Step 6 : Learning each mode thoroughly we start with the General mode. In this you see the first option that appears is Site name, you can change the name of the site you have opened before and this name will be used to refer to this site in the future. Hence you can bring changes to the name of your site from here.

In the general mode you have a check box which is by default checked to " Maintain The Site Using Hidden Metadata Files is selected ". This option has to be selected, If it's not selected, be sure to select it before moving on to the next steps. This is because some features of Expression Web demand for the dependencies on other pages so checking this option maintains this feature.

Step 7 : Moving on to the next mode that is the preview mode. The figure below shows the options provided under the preview tab.

There are mainly two radio buttons in this tab :

Preview Using Website URL : Under this tag there are One check box and four other radio buttons. By Default the check box is checked and the radio buttons shows that either Microsoft Expression Development server can only be used in ASP.NET and PHP pages or for all the web pages and Either use the PHP executables in the application options or for only this website. You may choose according to the need of application you are working upon. Also there is a browse option for browsing the PHP executables which becomes visible when you select to use the Microsoft Expression Development Server in all web pages. Form here you can select the PHP executable and check its compatibility with the application.

Preview Using Custom URL For This Website : We use this option when a site is to be opened remotely through File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Opening a site through FTP needs to change the path of the application so that the browser responds well to the application For example : the path of the application is "mspanwar/mysite/default.htm" then you have to change the path to "http:// mysite/default.htm". This makes the browser feel as the application is being run from the local machine itself.

Step 8 : Next is the Advanced tab the Figure below shows the headings under this tab:

There are two checkboxes under the Advanced tab named :

Hide Files And Folders That Begin With an Underscore Character ('_') check box : This option provides the flexibility to the developer to hide special files and folders from other users and editors of the site. Moreover there are other options too under this heading i.e. Server Message Language Setting, In this you can select comfortable language for the server message. Also there is Default Page Encoding setting in which you can specify the default encoding,
which is useful when you are creating non-English pages

Ignore The Keyboard When Deciding The Encoding Of New Pages : This option serves best when you design a page in a language that doesn't match the designer's keyboard setting.

At the bottom there is a button for deleting temporary files. This option is often useful as temporary files are periodically created in Expression Web and need to be removed to prevent any abnormal behavior while previewing pages.

Step 9 : Finally the Publishing and the important tab. The Figure below shows the parameters covered under this tab.

In this tab you are provided with the option to add, edit, delete and set as default the publishing. Clicking the add button opens up a new window to add the add the location of the file.

Similarly you can edit, delete the location. Now under the Options heading there are three options named as :

Include subsites : Subsites are an important concept for site management. Expression Web treats subsites as though they were completely independent sites regardless of the folder or site that contains them.

Optimize HTML during publishing : Selecting this option and then clicking customize button opens up another window showing How to manage the HTML in pages i.e.

Removing HTML comments.
Removing Whitespaces.
Removing generated HTML.

You can select the options as per the requirement in the pages.

Log changes during publishing: This option is selected by default and creates log files of the changes made during publishing the application. You can also view the log file by clicking the "View Log File button".

Finally after making appropriate changes in the setting press apply and select OK to reflect the changes in the application.