NetPublish Assistant - Create (static) Webpages
This dialog is called from the Item menu. The menu calls the static web page version of the NetPublish Assistant wizard. The wizard UI is the same as for web publishing. If you want to see how the NPA wizard looks in the Window UI, see the NPA dynamic page FAQ.
Opening Page
Notice you are told which catalogue you are publishing; this is useful as you might have galleries from more than one catalogue open and select the wrong one by mistake. You are also told how many items you've selected to use (and the total available. This is a reminder that the output process only uses data from the selected items in the current gallery. At any point you can jump to the end ('Export Webpages') or move back and forth with the 'Previous' and 'Next' buttons - your current changes are remembered. When ready, click 'Next' to continue....
Start Page
Select one of the built-in sites to use. Any sites you've added - or customised from built-in ones - will be listed here. If you know that you don't need to alter the template code, such as when re-using a previous template, you can jump straight to the publish stage using the 'Export Webpages' button. Otherwise click 'Next'...
Site Page
This page enables you to add a site title, link to your own logo artwork and attach your own HTML headers/footers to exported pages.
Gallery Page
The gallery layout is generally a thumbnail view type of display. There is a text description of the template. You can choose from several layout options each of which has a thumbnail (list at left), the fields displayed (list at right) and select the action that results from clicking a thumbnail:
You can even - if you understand HTML and JavaScript - alter the template code:
You can also choose a different CSS Style sheet which alters the colour palette (of the built-in templates, anyway):
If you desire you can preview your settings for the template in a web browser - click 'Preview Webpage'. When ready, click 'Export Webpages' or 'Next'...
Detail Page
Same concept for the Gallery except this is for a single item detail page. There are layout and field options as before, plus code and web preview options. You can choose the source image for your detail view...
Note that the 'Preview' option presumes you have already created Screen Previews. Clearly if you select 'Original', you original needs to be a format that can display in a web browser, e.g. JPEG is fine but TIFF isn't. You can also set the long side (in pixels) to be used for the detail page image...
You can type in type in your own value as well as those listed. It is not clearly documented but it appears that previews and thumbnails will be resized on export to match this figure. There is also an option to link to the original image by clicking this detail page image.
Export Page
If you've customised the template you may want to save it. Before doing so you can alter the text shown in the 'Description of Site' box. You can only save copies of built-in templates - as their code is embedded. Saving existing copies/custom sets will save over existing code. The default locations for saving templates and the final output pages is listed in the FAQ on NP's paths and folders and are:
Local custom or saved customised NPT sets:
C:\My Documents\Extensis\Portfolio\NetPublish\User Data\sites\web\
~/[user-defined-site-name]/NetPublish/User Data/sites/web/
Now your template code is safely stored you can export the web pages. Accept the default (as shown below) or 'Browse' to a new location:
Local static web pages:
C:\My Documents\Extensis\Portfolio\Webpages\[user-defined-site-name]\Webpages\
~/[user-defined-site-name]/Webpages/
When ready, click 'Export Webpages' and wait while the code and images are created/exported to your chosen location.
Finish Page
You're done! On the Windows OS the 'Webpages' button is a hyperlink showing the actual location of the start page. In either case click the button/link to start reviewing your web site. The links are all relative so the whole site can now be FTP'd to a remote server, such as your ISP. If you've made mistakes, you can run the wizard again and if you publish over the original site and changed assets will be overwritten - but unused ones won't be deleted. If in doubt publish to a new folder and delete the old copy after checking the new one (be aware of space impact if originals are being used).
Quick Cloning of Template Sets
If you just want to create an unaltered copy of a built-in template set (indeed, any template set), go to the Start Page, select your template set, click 'Export Webpages' and save a copy of the site. Now click cancel to close NPA. You won't export any web pages but you will have a complete copy of the as-installed built-in template set that you can now customise to your own requirements.
Question: NetPublish Assistant - Create (static) Webpages [FAQ00094.htm]
Last Update:- 01 June 2006
