Dear Janine,
I redesigned my site, uploaded it to my server, but it did not change. I couldn’t find the answer in your Dummies book… maybe I am an idiot.
Please help.
Dear reader:
Something tells me you’re not an idiot, but there are a few reasons that your new site may not be showing up. Here are a some things to check.
1. Make sure you uploaded your site to the right place. On many web servers, if you use the FTP info they send, you enter the main folder on the server where they keep your email, web folder, etc, but you need to then open the web folder and upload your files into that folder. It’s often called something like htdocs, or webdocs, or it could be named the URL of your site. It depends on your server, but the key thing to know is that you need to upload the files for your new site into that folder for them to become visible at your URL.
On a related note, a good way to make sure you’re in the right folder is to look for the pages of your old site, make sure you find the main page of the site, and then replace it with the main page of the new site and all of your other files.
2. Make sure you named the main page of your site correctly. On most servers, the main page of your site should be named index.html, but some servers are set up for default.html. It’s often okay to use .html or .htm — they work the same. However, if the main page of your old site is called, say, default.htm and you upload the new version with a main page named index.html, you won’t see the new page if the server is still ‘serving’ the old default.htm page.
Whatever the main page of your old site was called, assume that’s what you should name the main page of the new site and make sure you replace the old page with the new page.
I hope that helps and I wish you all be best with your newly redesigned site.
Janine