Westford Web FileMan Help Page

The FileMan file manager program offers high functionality for the management of your web space. Since this program works through your web browser, there is no need to install FTP or other file management utilities on your local computer. Listed below are descriptions of the various functions for the FileMan program.

FileMan Commands ~ On-line Editing ~ WYSIWYG Editor

Command
Name
Description
Disk Usage
 The value displayed in the lower right indicates total file space usage for the directory that you are currently in. Please manage your files accordingly to avoid wasted disk space. Remove files that are not longer used. If you reach your maximum allowed web space limit, you will not be able to upload any new files.
Root
 Click on this link to return to the root of your web space. The root of your web space through the web is www.westford.com/your_web_space_name/ All files and folders that you create in your space will start at that web address. For example, if you create the folder images in your file space, the web path is www.westford.com/your_web_space_name/images/
Search
 Find text within the selected files or in all files of a selected directory. Fill in the search criteria at the bottom of the page.
Replace
 Replace text within a selected file or directory. Check on files or directories to select and fill in criteria in the bottom window. Replace will not change HTML code, only page displayed text.
Upload
 Upload files from your local PC to your web space. Click on the Browse button to find the file on your PC. Select Multiple Upload to transfer more than one file at a time. You will need to select the Overwrite box if the file already exists in your web space. If the Auto button is selected, the file manger will take care of the transfer mode. Change this only if you require a specific ASCII or Binary upload. If you need to upload a large number of files at once, see the TAR command below.

New File
(& File Names)

Create a new file for editing. Be sure to download a copy to you local PC if you wish to keep a backup copy of the new file. Do not use spaces or special characters (like the items above the numbers on your keyboard) in your filenames.
New Directory
 Create a new directory to keep separate files in. Convenient for storing images are files for a particular event. Do not use spaces in your directory names.
Preferences
Set up the look of your FileMan interface. Config info is saved as a cookie on your PC.
Password
 Change your FileMan login password.
Log Off
 Properly shuts down your FileMan session and closes all operations. Note: Your FileMan session will automatically log you out after 3 hours of inactivity.
Edit
 Edits the file that you have selected with the checkbox. Same operation as clicking on the web page file name. Opens as either an HTML text editor or as a WYSIWYG editor. See "On-line Editing" below.
Download
 Transfers a file to your local PC. File will be transferred as complete with any dynamic code. Dynamic code will not be executed before the download. If you need to download a large number of files at once, see the TAR command below.
Copy
 Copies the selected files that you check into the directory that you specify in the bottom window.
Delete
 Remove the selected file(s).
Move
 Moves the selected files from the current directory to a new directory that you specify in the bottom window.
Protect
 You can password protect any directory in your space. Change into the directory that you want to have protected. Click the Protect link at the top of the file manager page, and enter the information requested at the bottom of the file manager page. Send us a note to have this feature enabled.
CHMOD
 Change permissions. By default, all files should have permissions of rw-r--r-- Permissions are set in three groups and define how a file can be accessed; r = read, w = write, x = execute. . The first three letters define what you, the user, can do with the file. The next three define what the group can do to the file (not too useful here, since the web site is not part of a group) The third set defines what the world, or general public, can do to the file. If you change a file to rw------- , you have shut down the "world read rights" and the file will not be visible on the web. If you change to rw-rw-rw , then you have enabled "world write privileges" Potentially, a stranger could now modify your file. For best results, use only rw-r--r-- (read write by you, read by the general public) or rw------- (read write by you, not accessible by the general public)
Tail
 Look at the end of a file. Good if you have "last modified" info here.
Diff
 Compare two files to look for differences. Useful if you are not sure of the changes made to similar files.
Tar

Manage archives of your web site. Useful for taking a snapshot of your web space to save a backup and to do a bulk upload to your web space. tar.gz files are uncompressed by most PC zip utilities. To create an archive file for downloading, select the files and/or folders that you want to include in the tar file, then click the "tar" link at the bottom of the file manager screen. Enter a name for the tar file in the line after "Command:" Then click "Create Tar". Your new tar file will show up in your web space. You can now download the tar file and open it on your PC using standard ZIP utilities. PLEASE REMOVE THE TAR FILE FROM YOUR WEB SPACE AFTER DOWNLOAD. Tar files usually take up a lot of disk space.
To do a bulk upload, first create a tar.gz archive of the files you want to upload. Unix/Linux machines will do this, or try the Powerarchive util for PCs http://www.powerarchiver.com/ Upload the tar.gz file to your web space. Click the tar.gz filename (not the icon) The bottom command window will ask you where you want to extract the files to. Enter the appropriate directory in your web space or ./ for the current directory, then hit the submit button. Caution: existing files in the web space with the same names as those in the archive file will automatically be overwritten.
Your web space will need to accommodate both your exiting files and the tar file. If the size of the tar file together with your exiting files exceeds your space allocation, your tar file will not upload. Try creating smaller sets of tar files, or remove your old files first. If you have disk space issues, please contact us.

   

On-line Editing

FileMan offers HTML text and WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing.

The HTML editor is a simple text editor. You will need to know HTML to properly edit files in the text mode. To edit a file, you can either click on the file name or you can select the file and click Edit.

The WYSIWYG editor is a very basic editor. This editor works only with Internet Explorer Version 5.5 or greater. It dose not work with other web browsers such as Netscape or Opera.

You can switch between the HTML text and WYSIWYG editor by clicking the Switch to Text or Switch to HTML button in the upper left corner of the Edit window.

WYSIWYG Editing
 Basic Functions Tables Images Links Forms Horizontal Lines

The WYSIWYG editor is good if you are only doing basic changes to your web page and if your web page dose not have any complex HTML structures to it. You might have trouble with this editor if you create a web page on your PC, upload it, and then try to edit the page on line using this editor. This editor works best if you use only this editor to create and change a particular page. Requires IE 5.5 or above. We have found that after many edits during one session, the page may not refresh properly. To see the page again, close and restart the editor. Be sure to save your work often as you edit your document.

Basic Functions
The WYSIWYG editor has the same basic functions as a simple word processor. In the toolbar, you will see familiar functions such as Copy, Cut, Paste, Undo, Redo, Bold, Italic, and Underline. Moving your mouse over the button will open show a bubble with the button name.You will also see Numbered List, Unordered List, Outdent, Indent, Font Size, and Font Color. To apply these formats, simply select (hold left mouse button and move cursor over) the text or image that you wish to apply the formatting to and click on the appropriate format button. Click on the Page Background Color button to select a page color.

Tables
Tables can be inserted into a web page document using this editor. Tables are very powerful functions that allow items to be properly positioned within a web page. Without tables, items placed on a web page will want to start in the upper left corner of the page, and the next item will follow until the right side of the web browser is reached. The text or items will then wrap to the next line. For a complete review of tables, please see the the Lyco Webmonkey's write up. You might want to experiment with tables in a test document first.

Horizontal Lines
Horizontal Rules are lines drawn in pages by the web browser. Clicking on the Horizontal Rule button will insert a line that will fill the page to the full width. You can change the look of the horizontal line to a certain extant, but you will have to switch to the text editor to do that. See our notes on HTML for help.

Images
The Image button allows you to insert images. The image must be on the web for you to insert that image into your page. To add an image to you page, first upload the image file to your web space. Click the Image button and type in the web path to the image. If you uploaded an image to your web space, the path would be http://www.westford.com/yourwebspace/image.name. For example, the image at the top of this page would have a web path of http://www.westford.com/tools/fileman_logo.gif If your images are missing, check and make sure that you have the complete web path listed when you add the image.

Links
To add a link to a web page, first select the text or image that will indicate the link. Then click on the Link button and enter in the web address of the page to link to. The two most common types of links are http:// for a web page and mailto: if you want to link in an email address. To link to a file in your web space, the web path would be http://www.westford.com/yourwebspace/page.html

Forms
If you would like to make a form, you can use the form element buttons located in the toolbar. You can add text lines, text boxes, radio buttons, checkboxes, select lists and submit, reset or other button types. Once you insert the buttons and define values, you can direct the form to a form processor. We have one that you can use on our server. You might have to switch to text mode and enter some information manually to make this work.

Be sure to save your work and download a backup copy to your PC. We can not easily recover (if at all) any document that you accidentally delete or damage.

Let us know if you have any questions on using the FileMan system.

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