Compatibility:
WebSite X5 Evo and Pro
Once you're done creating your webiste, you can proceed with the online upload so to make it known all around the world. Uploading a website online means copying the files it is made of (.html or .php pages, css style sheets etc) from your local PC to the server, so anyone can browse it.
You then need a service offering a space on its server. WebSite X5 does offer you a tailor-made web hosting, but you can also choose another external Provider.
In this guide, we will see how to upload your website onto a different webspace then the one provided by WebSite X5.
#tip - Find out more about the hosting service included with your WebSite X5 licence: What's the Hosting service included in WebSite X5 and how to activate it?
Exporting a website for the first time
- On Step 5 -Export, click on Upload the Website to Internet.
- Choose what you want to export. If it's the first time you upload the project, select the Upload all Website files to the Internet option as Upload Mode: in this way, the whole website will be exported.
- Now click on the drop-down menu reporting the Web Space Provider List the Other Web Space Provider option.
- While by using the WebSite X5 Hosting you don't have to do anything as everything is already automatically set up, if you select another provider you need to report the data and parameters necessary for the connection.
You need to report:- the Website Address (URL), i. e. the address associated to your uploaded website (www.mywebsite.com). This is a necessary information for the possible RSS Feed, E-commerce and SiteMap automatically created and connected to work properly.
- the Destination folder, i .e. the folder reported by your Provider for the website publication. You can either type in the folder name or click on
to open the Destination Folder window and select the wished folder among the ones which are saved on server.
#tip - The folder for the website publication is the one reporting the index.html file. Please ask your Provider if you're not sure about which is the correct one: not all the server folders can be used to upload your website.
- Now click on Parameters: in the following Server Settings window, type in the necessary parameters to connect to the server, to the database and to send the e-mails.
- In the FTP Parameters, you need to report:
- the Server Type, i.e. the connection to use for publishing the website files. Choose the one that your server uses from the following: FTP - File Transfer Protocol, SFTP - SSH File Transfer Protocol e FTPS - FTP over explicit TLS/SSL;
- the FTP Address. An example of an FTP address is "ftp.websitex5.com", where "websitex5.com" is the domain name.
- your Username and Password;
- you can possibly activate the Use Passive FTP and the Enable gzip compression options, so to upload the files faster;
- finally, you can also set the Simultaneous connections which the FTP engine needs to open with the server (which means basically the maximum number of files that can be exported simultaneously) and the server Port.
- In the Data Management section, you need to set the following details for the Database you want to use:
- The Host Name, i.e. the URL address for the MySQL Server your online Database is located on. In most cases, the website and the database are hosted on the same server, so you can simply report "localhost".
- the Database Name;
- your Username and Password;
- the Server folder with write access, the folder where the PHP script can write to.
#tip - Usually, providers allow all the Server folder to have write access: in such cases, you don't need to report any path to the public folder. However, in the test section of the online Control Panel, you can verify if the specified Folder with write access, as well as the possible subfolder, do exist and if the write access is correctly set.
- In the E-mail section, you need to report:
- the Script to be used to send the e-mails. You should use PHP Mailer, on which the SMTP and the Authenticated SMTP methods are based. You can alternatively use other methods which are based on the standard PHP "mail" function: Complete Script and, if it doesn't work, Low quality Server or Low level Script;
- the Sender e-mail address, which will be used for all the e-mail sent from the website, for instance via Contact Form, E-Commerce etc. If you want to make certain e-mails (such as, for example, e-commerce order e-mails) have the customer's e-mail address as the Sender, you can enable the Allow sending from alternate senders option.
#tip - If your Provider blocks the e-mails from being sent if the e-mail address domain and the website one don't match (for instance, if the e-mails coming from www.mywebsite.com are blocked if the sender e-mail doesn't have the @mywebsite.com domain), you can solve the issue by reporting an e-mail address whose domain is the same as the one chosen for your website.
- After you reported the requested data, click Ok to close the Server Settings window and go back to the Website Export to Internet one.
- Now, you just need to click on the Start button to upload the website onto your Server.
Exporting the changes applied to a website
If you apply any changes to your project, you will have to repeat the export process so to update the server files and, consequently, the website itself.
You can speed up the export process by using the Upload Mode option and choose to:
- Export only the files modified after last export on date: the upload date is stored in the Project file: that's why you should always save the changes you apply. Even by choosing to upload the edited files only, HTML pages and resource files available in the Res folder will be published as well: they will in fact probably report some changes too.
- Export only Blog and RSS Feed: this option is active only if the Blog and/or RSS Feed had already been exported once, and you can use it if you didn't apply any changes to the rest of the website, but you only added new Blog articles or RSS Feed news. In this case, in fact, only the Blog .PHP and .XML and the RSS Feed .XML file are exported.