[This picture shows how you can upload or download files from a site using Internet Explorer. The live site is on the left and the saved version on the right.]
Page Contents:
Problem 1) Picture will not display
Problem 2) Unable to edit text
Problem 3) New images do not upload properly in image gallery
Probelm 4) My changes display in the preview but the published website does not display my changes
Problem 5)Unable to load site to correct URL
Problem 6) Fasthosts password does not work
Problem 7) How can I edit my site using ftp instead of Sitebuilder?
Problem 8) Unable to log into my Sitebuilder site
This blog article will be of no earthly interest to anybody who is not in the violent throes of designing a website using Fasthosts Sitebuilder.
Problem 1) Pictures do not display
This seems to be a known bug for which there is a known cure, and the support site tells you "Step 1 Log into your SiteBuilder control panel.
Step 2 Click the link marked 'Pictures not displaying properly? Click here for help.'"
This seems to be a known bug for which there is a known cure, and the support site tells you "Step 1 Log into your SiteBuilder control panel.
Step 2 Click the link marked 'Pictures not displaying properly? Click here for help.'"
Problem 2) Unable to edit any of my text
"Are you using Firefox? Desist immediately. What right have you to use anything but Internet Explorer? " This is the conventional thinking of the Sitebuilder designers.
Problem 3) Pictures do not upload properly into the picture gallery
If your whole site siezes up it is probably because you have reached the limit because your pictures are a ridiculously huge format. Try deleting some pictures and loading up sensibly sized ones.
DO NOT WHATEVER YOU DO DELETE YOUR SITE, especially if you have not unpublished it first, as you will not be able to over-write it. If you load a new version of Sitebuilder your login will not work and you will not be given access to edit your original URL.
Problem 4) My changes are not displayed on the Published site
Sometimes changes to websites do not display because computers keep a cache of sites and show you an old version. You can press shift f9 to jog the computer awake.
Otherwise, are you sure that your changes are loading up to the correct URL? If the site you are editing is a copy of your original website, Sitebuilder automatically adds an extension name and publishes it to a new folder in your original site. So whereas your website url might be 'shoesforfree.com' Sitebuilder publishes the new copied site to a folder called 'shoesforfree.com/shoesforfree' in this case read on.
Problem 5) Unable to upload Sitebuilder website to correct URL
Sitebuilder only asks you for a url the first time you load up a site. After that it does not ask you any more. You can make a copy of the site and in that case it will ask you which URL to load the copy to but if you already have a site using that URL then you will not be allowed to use the URL that you used already. You will get an error message "you already have already published a site to your base URL." This problem happened to me after I deleted my original site without unpublishing it. There was then no way to edit the site except to save a copy of the website to my laptop and edit the site using Windows and ftp instead.
In order to use ftp you have to encounter the following problem:
Problem 3) Pictures do not upload properly into the picture gallery
If your whole site siezes up it is probably because you have reached the limit because your pictures are a ridiculously huge format. Try deleting some pictures and loading up sensibly sized ones.
DO NOT WHATEVER YOU DO DELETE YOUR SITE, especially if you have not unpublished it first, as you will not be able to over-write it. If you load a new version of Sitebuilder your login will not work and you will not be given access to edit your original URL.
Problem 4) My changes are not displayed on the Published site
Sometimes changes to websites do not display because computers keep a cache of sites and show you an old version. You can press shift f9 to jog the computer awake.
Otherwise, are you sure that your changes are loading up to the correct URL? If the site you are editing is a copy of your original website, Sitebuilder automatically adds an extension name and publishes it to a new folder in your original site. So whereas your website url might be 'shoesforfree.com' Sitebuilder publishes the new copied site to a folder called 'shoesforfree.com/shoesforfree' in this case read on.
Problem 5) Unable to upload Sitebuilder website to correct URL
Sitebuilder only asks you for a url the first time you load up a site. After that it does not ask you any more. You can make a copy of the site and in that case it will ask you which URL to load the copy to but if you already have a site using that URL then you will not be allowed to use the URL that you used already. You will get an error message "you already have already published a site to your base URL." This problem happened to me after I deleted my original site without unpublishing it. There was then no way to edit the site except to save a copy of the website to my laptop and edit the site using Windows and ftp instead.
In order to use ftp you have to encounter the following problem:
Problem 6) Why doesn't my Fasthost password work?
There is nothing wrong with your password. Your user name is the problem. You think you have one Fasthosts user name but Fasthosts for some reason thinks you have three. You have to use three different versions of your user name to log into three different parts of the Fasthosts site, which you were not expecting, so you do not try. Only a mad fool who was completely desperate would enter quite so many different versions of a password that she would fortuitously fall upon the right ones.
To log into the Fasthosts site at all you are presented with a box asking for your username or email address. This is somewhat eccentric, because what it actually means is your email address, and if you put your username in it will smile politely but firmly and do nothing.
To log into sitebuilder you use your username, as you would expect.
To log in by ftp you use the full name of the website followed by the site extension, for instance felicitysbutterflies.co.uk if that is the full web address of your site.
In all cases the password remained mercifully the same one.
There is nothing wrong with your password. Your user name is the problem. You think you have one Fasthosts user name but Fasthosts for some reason thinks you have three. You have to use three different versions of your user name to log into three different parts of the Fasthosts site, which you were not expecting, so you do not try. Only a mad fool who was completely desperate would enter quite so many different versions of a password that she would fortuitously fall upon the right ones.
To log into the Fasthosts site at all you are presented with a box asking for your username or email address. This is somewhat eccentric, because what it actually means is your email address, and if you put your username in it will smile politely but firmly and do nothing.
To log into sitebuilder you use your username, as you would expect.
To log in by ftp you use the full name of the website followed by the site extension, for instance felicitysbutterflies.co.uk if that is the full web address of your site.
In all cases the password remained mercifully the same one.
Problem 7) How can I edit my site in ftp?
You can use Internet Explorer to edit a site using ftp (file transfer protocol.)
Open up Internet explorer and in the address bar write the following: ftp://ftp.mysite.org (replace the word mysite with the address of your site and the extension .org with the extension name of your site.) A window will appear asking you for your username and password. For your username enter the name of your site with the extension of your site e.g. mysite.org . (not what you would expect for a username.) Then you should be logged on and you will see a strange screen headed 'FTP root...'. The screen will include the instructions "To view this FTP site in Windows Explorer, click Page, and then click Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer" Follow this advice and the login screen will appear again. Repeat the login process as above. The site will now open and you will see several folders, one of which will be called htdocs, which will include all of your site. In the HTdocs folder you will see all the files of your website. Shrink this window until it takes about a quarter of your screen.
You can use Internet Explorer to edit a site using ftp (file transfer protocol.)
Open up Internet explorer and in the address bar write the following: ftp://ftp.mysite.org (replace the word mysite with the address of your site and the extension .org with the extension name of your site.) A window will appear asking you for your username and password. For your username enter the name of your site with the extension of your site e.g. mysite.org . (not what you would expect for a username.) Then you should be logged on and you will see a strange screen headed 'FTP root...'. The screen will include the instructions "To view this FTP site in Windows Explorer, click Page, and then click Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer" Follow this advice and the login screen will appear again. Repeat the login process as above. The site will now open and you will see several folders, one of which will be called htdocs, which will include all of your site. In the HTdocs folder you will see all the files of your website. Shrink this window until it takes about a quarter of your screen.
Click on 'start' and navigate in your computer create a new folder. Open the folder and resize the window until it takes another quarter of your screen. Now on your screen you have two windows, one of the contents of the online htdocs folder and one of a new folder. Copy and paste a copy of all the files in your htdocs folder into the new folder. Now you have a copy of the site on your computer.
You can now copy and paste pages from the saved version into the ftp version, i.e. from one window to the other.You can download a program such as NVU to edit the saved version of webpages and make them beautiful before you copy and paste them into the live folder. NVU has an upload facility. which is an alternative method of uploading, but I could not make it work with this site.
YOu may be having a password problem, see problem 6 for solution, however once you have deleted the Sitebuilder program you cannot load it again as it will not recognise your password
The only solution I can suggest is that you log in as a new customer, build a replica site, save it to your computer and upload it from there using ftp (see problem 7 solution above.)
Here you have the very complicated solutions for all desperate Fasthost users who cannot access their web pages, and whose phantom websites litter our web universe. Yes, there is a God.
Applause please.
I might add that I used to work in an IT department with a woman who was reputed to be an IT genius. Whenever I asked her for help to solve an IT problem she would never know the answer but she just fiddled around with the various options for ages and ages until eventually she hit on one that worked. That's how it's done. It is just like it says in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, you can do anything if you have the patience and take the time.
Comments