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Web Site Publisher

Release History

Web Site Publisher is an intelligent FTP tool for publishing a web site to the web. Release history:

April 2008 - version 2.0.3 build 2465

New features of this release:

The expiry date has been removed. This version will now no longer expire.
WSP now includes an option to check for an update. This function is available under the Tools menu, select "Check for update...". This connects to the hosting web-server and checks whether an update is available. If an update is available then you have the option to download it. The presence of updates are not checked automatically so please remember to check occasionally.
What's happened to turbo? The turbo option has been removed from the main dialog and moved to the new "optimisations" tab of the web site properties. This means that each website can individually have turbo switched on or off. The default setting is off, so you are advised to consider explicitly switching turbo on for each website.
The FTP connection logic is now more visible. This allows the user to select between Active and Passive FTP. These settings can be found on the "FTP Parameters" tab of the web site properties. The default is still "Auto", which causes WSP to connect using Passive and then Active if the connection fails.
Sites can be disabled within WSP and when a site is disabled, it is now displayed greyed-out in the list of sites.
The default setting for all websites is now to ignore any folders called "_vti_cnf" or "_vti_pvt". These are folders generated by FrontPage which it uses to store information that FrontPage uses but which are not needed on the website. For people using FrontPage it would be worth considering whether these directories (if they exist at the server) should be removed, and you can accomplish this by changing the settings for these folders from "Ignore" to "Remove".
Behaviour change: Previously any sub-folder specified as part of the target destination on an FTP server was always treated as an offset to the initial folder you were placed in when connecting. For example, if publishing to www.cryer.co.uk/public_html then if the FTP server were to place the user in \www then WSP would end up publishing to \www\public_html. As of now the behaviour is that the folder specified is taken as absolute, to www.cryer.co.uk/public_html always publishes to \public_html regardless. For the vast majority of websites this change will have no effect, but for a miniority you will need to review the FTP address.
New optimisation option "image". This is intended to be used for those websites where the local image is generated by a method that means that the dates of files and folders cannot be relied upon as an indication of what files have been changed. This works by taking a copy of the website and copying files if the contents of those files is different. It works using a byte by byte comparison rather than relying on files dates. The disadvantage of "image" is that it utilizes disk space equivalent to that of the website, and it is generally slower - although if file dates cannot be relied upon as an indication of change then "image" will be considerably faster than the alternative of copying every file up to the server.
When doing a publish-all, any errors are reported but the publishing of other sites continues without waiting for the user to respond to the error message.

July 2006 - version 1.6.2 build 2167

This version expires on 30th October 2008

New features:

It is now possible to configure whether WSP displays a message box when it finishes publishing and whether that message box should be displayed with a timeout. The configuration for this is reached via the new menu item "Tools", on the "Tools" menu select "Options". These options are global and effect the behaviour of the tool, regardless of which website is being published.
When specifying files or folders to ignore (or delete), it is now possible to include a path. For example if "\folder1\images" is to be excluded but "\folder2\images" included the folder to exclude would be entered as "\folder1\images". A leading back-slash ('\') on the folder name indicates the top level folder, without the back-slash the name will be matched against any folder. For example "images" refers to any folder called images, whereas "\images" refers to only the top level folder called "images" so would not match against "sub\images". To exclude the top level folder "images" but not "folder1\images" enter "\images". To exclude all folders called "images" enter "images".
The file "thumbs.db" (which Windows XP creates to store cached thumbnail information) is added by default to the list of files ignored during publishing. Being ignored they will not be copied up but any "thumbs.db" files already on the website will not be deleted. To ensure that any "thumbs.db" files on the website are removed change the setting to "delete". If you need to publish "thumbs.db" then edit the properties for the website and remove this setting.
Gary Kuever has suggestion the option that when publishing is complete the "Publishing Completed" dialog box does not try to get focus. This is because this can be disruptive when working on other things while publishing. (Note: the behaviour in XP is different from other versions of Windows because it prevents applications from grabbing focus.)

Bug fixes:

An issue which could cause timeouts to take much longer than they should has been resolved.
When performing a publish or publish-all the menu option for publishing the current site was not disabled.

April 2006 - version 1.6 build 2146

This version expires on 30th September 2008.

New features:

Ability to selectively disable publishing for part of a website (by folder) when part of a website is undergoing maintenance, development or reorganisation.
Allow certain file types to be excluded from the upload - user selectable.
Option to include/exclude recursive publishing of sub-directories.
Ability to control explicitly which files are copied as text (i.e. ASCII or Binary transfer).
Ability to specify file permissions (chmod).
Confirmation check added that the web server exists when creating a new web site for publication or when configuring its properties. This verifies that the ftp server is contactable and that the username and password are correct. It is an optional stage.
Keyboard shortcuts added - for example to publish a website.

Release Date	Version	Expires	Release Notes
March 2005	1.5 build 1442	31 March 2007	New features: Can now specify which FTP port to use if an FTP server does not use the default FTP port. (Suggested by David Schneider.) Bug fix: Can now publish to ftp addresses that include more than one depth of sub-folder. Bug fix: An unhandled timeout could occur when listing files from the FTP server. The size and location of Web Site Publisher on screen is now remembered between runs. (Suggested by Patrice Wendling.) On login failure a better error message is displayed - showing the actual error from the FTP server. This makes it easier to diagnose incorrect username or password errors. The maintenance option to delete files from the website that no longer exist, has been moved from the "Advance tab" of the web site properties tab sheet to the new tab "Behaviour". Additional property added, "Disabled" which allows you to mark a website as disabled so that when publishing (either a publish all or publish current) the site will not be published.

The release history of expired versions is available here.