Uploading your Web Site to AOL with FrontPage

Iain Laskey looks at using FrontPage to upload to AOL's web space

AOL allows you 2Mb of web space per screen name for publishing your web sites to. Whilst this doesn't seem much, you can always use all of your screen names and link pages from one screen name to another. This will give you more than 10Mb which is a bit better, especially if your site features a lot of graphics. This can be rather tricky to set up so I'll just concentrate on uploading for a single screen name here.

Hold the Front Page

Microsoft FrontPage has its own built in publishing tool which allow you to upload directly from within the application. Make sure the web site you wish to upload is loaded and ready. You must also be logged on to AOL using the screen name you wish to upload to. You can then access the publish function by selecting 'Publish Web' from the FrontPage File menu.

In the Publish Web dialog box enter ftp://members.aol.com. If this is the first upload ensure that 'Publish All Pages' is selected. If you are uploading an update of an existing web site, select 'Publish Changed Pages Only'. This checks which files are on the site and only uploads those that are needed by looking for new or modified pages in FrontPage.

Next click on the Publish button. You will be prompted for a username and password. Enter 'anonymous' for the username/user id and for the password enter your screen name with @aol.com appended such as ericant@aol.com. Some combinations of FrontPage and AOL software require you to replace this with your email address and password e.g. ericant@aol.com and the ericant screen name password. FrontPage will then attempt to connect to AOL. Assuming your details are correct, your pages will start to upload. FrontPage provides you with the status window showing the progress of the upload so you can be sure it is indeed uploading.

Once it has finished, FrontPage will advise you of the success (or not!) of the upload. You can then be able to view the web site by going to http://members.aol.com/screenname replacing screenname with your own screen name.

If you have any problems uploading, AOL's tech support will be able to advise further.

Iain Laskey
See Iain's site at www.pcbookreview.com