Friday - The Automatic FAQ Maker
Introduced with v7, NetPublish is the web publishing component of Portfolio. NetPublish is normally abbreviated to 'NP' in the FAQ; NPS implies NP Server, NPA the NP Assistant - the 'wizard' in the Portfolio client used for publishing to NP. NP may be used with standalone catalogues or in conjunction with Portfolio Server. A primary benefit of using Portfolio Server with NP Server is changes to the catalogue are immediately reflected in the associated website. With uploaded catalogues, changes to data and/or images mean that at minimum the whole catalogue must be uploaded again. If the web server is not on the same LAN as the Portfolio client used for the publishing the upload can take a while (depending on the size of the catalogue and other assets needed for download.
NP replaces the old PortWeb in v7 onwards. NetPublish (NP) is described more fully in NetPublish section of the FAQ.
*** Discontinued Software ****
PortWeb, the web server plug-in for Portfolio v4-v6 is not sold separately - in v7 it is replaced entirely by NetPublish. For v6 users it is a free download for registered users only (you must give you registration code for download access). For v5 users it is a part of all licences of Network or Server versions. It can be used with a variety of web server software.
Presently it only works with Windows and Mac OS based. Although Portfolio Server v6.1 for OS-X has been released there is no OS-X native version of PortWeb. It is believed that PortWeb will receive a major upgrade soon which means that it is unlikely that a PortWeb v6.1 for OS-X will be released
PortWeb allows web users to query 'served' Catalogues via their web browser. This is done using templates created using Portfolio's Export HTML function. Note that any templates created that you wish to use, must be saved in the actual Catalogue to be served to web users. PortWeb templates can't be accessed from catalogues upgraded to v7 so export them first. PortWeb templates must be rewritten using NP syntax for use in v7 NP.
More than one Catalogue may be served but be aware of resource usage on the server.
If you serve a large or regularly changing Catalogue(s) via PortWeb, you should consider upgrading to the Portfolio Server versions. Server allows you to do 'incremental' upgrades of the catalogue in situ whereas with client only, you will need to update (upload) the entire Catalogue when changes are made. Obviously this can be time consuming if you have an external (or hosted) web server, a big Catalogue and slow-ish connection!
Question: NetPublish (v7/8) and PortWeb (v4/5/6) [FAQ00014.htm]
Last Update:- 21 January 2008
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