Learning  nvu logoa web authoring system - The Site Manager


The Index of this tutorial

            1. About N|vu
            2. N|vu Site Manager
            3. Publish your webpage to your website

About N|VU , the open source web authoring system:

N|vu is an Open Source project started by Lindows, Inc.
N|vu is a complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Even Mac OSX is not being forgotten with a official release.
N|vu (pronounced N-view, for a "new view") makes managing a web site a snap.  Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with
no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.

N|vu was started from the Mozilla Composer code base.  The Mozilla Internet suite is in the process of being broken up into individual pieces
(browser, email, etc.).  Nvu picks up where Composer left off, adding additional features, functionality and ease of use.

What are the features of N|VU?  Some features are:
For a complete feature list go to the latest features and screenshots for Nvu here!

Where can I get N|VU?  You can download NVU from the website http://www.nvu.com/ .
You need support for N|VU? You get it through the forum website http://forum.nvudev.org/ .

N|VU Site Manager:
N|VU has a site manager , this is what it say it is, a manager for your site. With this Site Manager you can manage your site, upload new documents, pictures and so on to your webspace at your provider or any other place if you got the rights to do this. Here we try to explain this Site Manager of N|VU.

First of all we have to startup the N|VU program. After N|VU has started, you will get the tipsscreen, unless you have unmarked it, and the N|VU screen, with or without the Site Manager.  If you don't see the Site Manager at the left of your screen , then hit the F9 key and it will appear. Hitting F9-key again will remove the N|vu Site Manager and you can work fullscreen with N|vu. Here is the default startup screen of N|VU, without the tips window.


At the left of this screen you can see the N|VU Site Manager, at right you can create a new document. At the top you have the buttons and menus to create the documents. The main features of this Site Manager are shown in the following screenshot:
There are two pulldown menu's, in these menu's you see the existing sites, and how the Site Manager will show the files on that site. Show all Files, or just HTML files. Do you want to see it in a Tree view or not. There is a refresh button, a new folder button, a delete button , these buttons are all applied onto the active site, so if you delete a file it is on the site displayed in the first pulldown menu.

With the button you can edit, add and delete sites to the Site Manager. If you press this button, you get the following window:



What do you need to enter here , well  that will be the following information:
Site Name
 Place here a name for your site which you are going to manage, give it a smart name, so that you will know which site it is.
HTTP address of your homepage
 Place here the url to your site, e.g.: http://www.myisp.com/myusername
Publishing address
 Put here your access url to your website data, e.g.: ftp://ftp.myisp.com/myusername
User name
 Enter here your username which you need to access your website data
Password
 Enter here the password needed to access the data.


Here we have an example filled in, it should explain itselfs as described above.  Because  the fact that we often publish new stuff to our website I hit the  Save Password mark to save the password for the next time we have to  "upload"  a page.  As you can see, this provider supplies  your username as a add-on to the URL.  The username is also needed to logon to the ftp-server of this provider. When you now click on the OK button these settings will be saved with the site name eisman's home.



Now we will see a entry in the Site Manager,  but due to our little screen we don't see what it is. We have pressed down the  first  pulldown menu with the button but we just get some dots ...  it doesn't tell us much. And under the Name section we see just that there are two directories.  Nothing more,  we expected to see our Site Name to change this, we have to enlarge the Site Manager's pane, this can be done by putting the mouse pointer between both sections (the Site Manager and the empty page) then we click and hold the left mouse-button and drag it to the right, you will see that the Site Manager pane will enlarge en the empty page will shrink.

The new look of the N|vu Site Manager is: Finally we can see what it says. The Site Manager can manage more then one site, so that is the reason why we got a pulldown menu for this, the second pulldown menu is for the file-types which we want to see under the Name section, we got here three options: All Files , HTML documents and Image files , which will show only the corresponding file-type.


After we have setup a site to be used with the Site Manager , this site will be loaded everytime you startup N|vu, show here
When the Site Manager is done, the site name pulldown menu says so choice your site and in the Name section you will see the files of that website. Want to edit one? Then just double click on the one you want to edit and it will appear in the right pane.

Sometimes we get the following message in the Site Manager    What to do? Well try a to get it correct with a F9 key press (twice) or open a new empty page. The reason is not very clear, it might be a bug in N|vu, but it can depend on the connection speed between you and your ISP or your provider of your webspace. If have a site on your local machine, which is possible, you probably won't see this message (at least I didn't see it).

Publish your webpage to your website:

After we have made a webpage, we like to publish it on our website, to do this we need to push the button:   you will get the Publish Page window where you can select serveral options how to put the webpage on the website.  For example with or without the images, you now might think, why should I send my webpage to my website without the images, well I don't know why. But if you check the screenshot below you see that this is an option. Perhaps you just have changed some text and don't need to send the images again. This saves you upload and time.







The options we have to give are:
   * The Site Name;
    *  The Page Title , which will be filled in automatic;
    *  The File name , which also will be filled in automatic;
 
 Optional are:
     * The Site subdirectory for this page;
     * Include images and other files;
 
  








The Settings tab shows you the information of your Site Name as you have entered them at the beginning of Adding a site to the Site Mananger.





















Your Site Name settings.


If you are ready with the setting you can publish your webpage (and perhaps images or other files) to your website, just with a simple click on the button and N|VU is going to send the data to your webspace. If all is correct (username/password) the file will be put on the webspace.
If it is a large webpage with many images, it could take awhile before everything is transferred.

REMARK, the N|vu sitemanager is being rewritten, so I stop working on this document and when the new sitemanager is ready, I will create a new tutorial . However the use is still the same and it still works also on version 0.81

Datum: 24 September 2004                             Voor eislon.nl                                          Auteur: S. R. Eissens

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