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1: The File System Folder

Introduction

The key component of Iosphere's distrubuted computing and large site management abilities is the 'File System Folder'. Virtual Folders only store information within the project file. For larger sites this is not only impractical but also an extremely bad idea. One stray delete command could remove your entire site.

The File System Folder removes the risk of accidentally deleting your site by allowing you to store it within the standard file system. The 'New Web Site Wizard' allows you to set up a site using a File System Folder. When you have done this you need to tell the File System Folder where to look for you site structure - or where to store it.

Configuring the Folder Object

The File System Folder has one extra configuration page - called 'Configuration'. This is where you specify the folder thay you want to use for your site. This can be any valid path, either on disk or a remote computer on the network. You can add documents to the File System Folder as usual, and can create new subfolders on disk by dragging a 'File System Folder' across onto an existing one.

The recurse setting determines whether or not the File System Folder will recurse the subfolders. Setting the 'Resource Folder' option wil prevent the folder from creating a section index list, like a Virtual Resource Folder.

Distributed Sites

For a distributed site you would set up a new site with the root object as a Virtual Folder. This is the starting point for all of your subsections. For this example I'll use the following scenario:

You have set up a website for a company with four departments. Each department has to manage its own section of the site. The four departments are:

• Finance
• Marketing
• Production
• Human Resources

Each department will run its section from a Windows network computer with the same name as the deparment. The actual site for each computer will be stored on shared drive c, in subfolder Site.

For this scenario you need to add four File System Folders, configuring each one for each department. For example, for the Finance department you would set a File System Folder to folder '\\Finance\c\Site' and check the 'Recurse Subfolders' box.

When you've done this for all of the departments each one will be able to add files just by saving HTML pages to the respective folders on the network computer. Just press the 'Refresh' button before you generate final HTML.

This is also possible by giving each department a folder on the Iosphere computer and then sharing the folders.

By Ashley Brown, Email the author