Alistair’s cakeBlog

This is how you publish to a webdav enabled website from Windows XP using My Network Places. If you’re out of the office you can set up a quick connection using Internet Explorer. I’ll explain that one later.

Publishing to your website from the desktop

• Go to Start->My Network Places
• Click on the text “Add a network place” on the left of the box
• You’ll now see a dialog box appear that displays the text “Welcome to the Add Network Place Wizard”. Click on the “Next” button at the bottom of the dialog box
• Make sure that “Choose another network location” is selected. If it isn’t, click on it. Click on the “Next” button
• In the box under the text “Internet or network address”, enter your webdav URL, e.g. http://mysite.com/publish
• Click on the “Next” button
• If the website is password protected, you’ll see a small dialog box appear. Enter your username and password and click the “OK” button
• If the dialog box appears again but your username is prefixed by the website URL, i.e. mysite.com/username it’s necessary to start again and enter a new webdav URL. Click on the “Cancel” button of the small dialog box
• Change your webdav URL to be of the form http://username@mysite.com/folder
• Click on the “Next” button
• The small dialog box will appear again if the website is password protected. Enter your username and password as before and click on the “OK” button
• A new box will appear now. Under the text “Type a name for this network place”, type a meaningful name for your website connection, e.g. “Publish to mysite.com”
• Click on the “Next” button
• A final box will appear telling you about your new connection. Click on the “Finish” button
• To publish to your website, all you have to do is open My Network Places (Start -> My Network Places) and double click on the name of your connection on the right of the screen. This will open your website. You can then just drag and drop files and folders from your PC to the website and vice versa

Publishing to your website from Internet Explorer

• Open Internet Explorer
• From the menu, choose File -> Open
• A dialog box will appear. Under the text “Type the internet address of a document or folder…”, type your webdav URL, e.g. http://mysite.com. Do NOT click on the “OK” button until you’ve read the next step
• Make sure the checkbox to the left of the text “Open as web folder” has a tick or a cross in it. If it doesn’t, click on the small blank square to the left of the “Open as web folder” text
• Click on the “OK” button now
• If the website is password protected, you’ll see a small dialog box appear. Enter your username and password and click the “OK” button
• If the dialog box appears again but your username is prefixed by the website URL, i.e. mysite.com/username it’s necessary to start again and enter a new webdav URL. Click on the “Cancel” button of the small dialog box
• Change your webdav URL to be of the form http://username@mysite.com/folder
• The small dialog box will appear again if the website is password protected. Enter your username and password as before and click on the “OK” button
• Your website will open and you can drap and drop files to it from your PC to Internet Explorer

In case you see a strange message such as “error 31 = ERROR_GEN_FAILURE” or similar, go to this Microsoft page