Quick sheet on Taking it with you...

Tips on archiving and moving a Website

1. The main idea

  • How to think of the web not as pages but as integrated sites
  • How to maintain things so they are easy to move around

    • 2. Absolute and relative links. How this makes such a difference

    (This is an absolute link "http://www.colorado.edu/geography/foote/maps/maps.html"

    (These are relative links "../maps.html" and "notes.html")

    3. How to move whole sites:

    A. When they are regularly ordered and well organized...

    Make three identical copies of the directory structure (old Web host, new Web host, on your local machine or disk) using ws_ftp

    For best results choose both "binary" and "auto" for file formats in FTP

    Check the links carefully, because of the problem with relative and absolute links. You will probably have to make minor edits on each page.
     

    B. When they aren't so regularly ordered and carefully organized...

    Use products like WebWacker (http://www.bluesquirrel.com/products/whacker/whacker.html) to download and archive a whole site or sections thereof...
    You can also use the Netscape Composers "Publishing" options to download files and adjust links.

    Problems: These downloads rename files by filenumber. What this is really good for is if you want to "demo" a site without a web link. Just download the whole site...

    4. Letting others know that your site has moved

    A. In some search engines, their advanced search options allow you to search to see who has established links to the materials you are moving.  Use this information to send messages to users giving them the new URLs for your materials.

    B. Leave an forwarding document that says "This site has moved..." You can also do a "browser redirect" by putting this tag in the <head> part of your document. This one will send it to the next page in 3 seconds. 

    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3;URL=new_destination.htm">
    A complete file might look something like this:

    <html>
    <head>
       <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="8; url=http://www.colorado.Edu/geography/gcraft/notes/gps/gps_f.html">
       <title>Automatic Transfer</title>
    <html>
    </head>
    <body>
    <center>
    <h2>Global Positioning System (GPS)</h2>
    <h3>Notes have moved to the University of Colorado at Boulder at the following address:</h3>
    <br>
    <b>http://www.colorado.Edu/geography/gcraft/notes/gps/gps_f.html</font></b>
    <br>
    <b>Please update your links or notify the web administrator of the change</b>
    <br>
    This page will take you to the new location in 8 seconds.
    <br>
    We apologize for the inconvenience.
    </center>
    </body>
    </html>

    First created by Sam Wilson on 5/1/98.  Last revised by Ken Foote on 2011.11.17.  k.foote@colorado.edu