HTML Source Code

[charlesplattjr]

Hey everyone. I am a new web developer and I am taking over what someone else has done. The person didn't leave any bread crumbs for me to follow at all. I am having the craziest time locating the source html code file within the FTP server in order to edit the code for the website. Can I locate the source html file by looking at the source code from the site? I am using firefox as a web browser. Your help will be extremely appreciated.

[YorkshireSteve]

Hi,

When you connect to the server via FTP then there should be a folder in there with the website's file in it. It's likely to be something like httpdocs, public_html, www etc. Each file in here should represent the same file on the website. For example, www.mysite.com/index.html should be located in /httpdocs/index.html and so on. If however the previous person used things such as mod_rewrite then you will most likely have to look through a .htaccess file to work out which files are actually being used (they are likely to different to the file part of the URL).

When you're viewing a site as an end user (i.e. in a web browser) as little information as possible is given to you about the server of the behind-the-scenes mechanics of things. Think of it as a 'need to know' basis here - someone surfing the site doesn't need to know these things and telling them could compromise security.

Steve

[charlesplattjr]

Okay, so when a websites homepage design is adjusted, its adjusted through a single html file correct. This is the file that I cannot find. I have looked within the public_html folder. I am trying to delete a few lines of code within this file. I am not sure on how to find this file, the file to control the overall look of the domain.

[dm01]

Is there a content management system, such as Joomla or Drupal, or are you working with just the server?

[charlesplattjr]

I am just working with the server. I am able to change a intro index.html file. I changed the hyperlink that points to the other file and I pointed it to the file that I created but the changes will not stick. I delete a certain area of code and it comes right back. The path in the address bar clearly shows that its pointing to my file. I don't underrstand whats happening

[dm01]

Is that a space in a file name? Kill it! You can never have spaces in URLs, it plays havoc with the machinery and clogs the tubes ;). Replace that and all spaces with an underscore (_).

Your first page must be index.html, unless you want to do some really fun stuff.

[YorkshireSteve]

Originally Posted by dm01

Is that a space in a file name? Kill it! You can never have spaces in URLs, it plays havoc with the machinery and clogs the tubes ;). Replace that and all spaces with an underscore (_).

Nooooooo.... Don't use an underscore, use a hyphen instead. I was reading a while back about some research which had been done in to Google's indexing and underscores won't help your search rankings.

Example, look the URL for this post: /design-forum/web-design-programming/330283-html-source-code.html

Google will happily see the keywords 'web', 'design' and 'programming' (among others), but if it the url contained 'web_design_programming' then it sees that as a full word and won't match each individual word (OK, they will most likely appear within the page text, or inbound link text, but still, maximise!)

Steve