iWeb: Navbar and photo gallery will not load

[fragglerawk]

This is very frustrating. My site worked before, but now it does not. It looks good in iWeb, but when I publish it, all I see is the Home page. None of the links to the other pages are there. And when I type in the URL for the photo gallery manually, it doesn't load either. It doesn't even work when I publish locally. At my wit's end here!

[Jack]

First off, iWeb sucks. The way it generates webpages is completely awful and that's why you're having trouble. Instead of creating straight-up HTML, it uses a twisted labyrinth of javascript widgets and XML files. So, essentially, the entire page is built dynamically using client-side scripts. If you ever wanted your page to show up nicely in search engines, fuggedaboutit. You're better off making your page entirely in flash.

So, the navbar and the photo's page both work by pulling data from an XML file. If your page can't get this XML file, then it just fails. I think that's what's happening here.

The fact that it also doesn't work on your local folder indicates to me that your file permissions are wonked up. So, try this for me first:

Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

Select your hard drive and click Repair Disk Permissions.

See if that helps.

If it does, then that's good. Try re-uploading.

If it doesn't, try changing the file permissions on your web server. You can do this through an FTP program or your web host's file manager. They are probably all set to 0644 right now. Set it to 0755. Do this for feed.xml and rss.xml (in your photos folder, I believe).

If that STILL doesn't work, go to the root of your website (www or public_html) and look for a file called .htaccess

Open it up in a text editor.

Add these lines:

<Files feed.xml>        Order allow,deny    Allow from all    Satisfy All</Files><Files rss.xml>        Order allow,deny    Allow from all    Satisfy All</Files>

Try again.

if that doesn't work, send me the url to your site and a $5 papa john's coupon and I'll fix it for you.

[alexmvp]

First off, iWeb sucks. The way it generates webpages is completely awful and that's why you're having trouble. Instead of creating straight-up HTML, it uses a twisted labyrinth of javascript widgets and XML files. So, essentially, the entire page is built dynamically using client-side scripts. If you ever wanted your page to show up nicely in search engines, fuggedaboutit. You're better off making your page entirely in flash.

So, the navbar and the photo's page both work by pulling data from an XML file. If your page can't get this XML file, then it just fails. I think that's what's happening here.

The fact that it also doesn't work on your local folder indicates to me that your file permissions are wonked up. So, try this for me first:

Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

Select your hard drive and click Repair Disk Permissions.

See if that helps.

If it does, then that's good. Try re-uploading.

If it doesn't, try changing the file permissions on your web server. You can do this through an FTP program or your web host's file manager. They are probably all set to 0644 right now. Set it to 0755. Do this for feed.xml and rss.xml (in your photos folder, I believe).

If that STILL doesn't work, go to the root of your website (www or public_html) and look for a file called .htaccess

Open it up in a text editor.

Add these lines:

<Files feed.xml>        Order allow,deny    Allow from all    Satisfy All</Files><Files rss.xml>        Order allow,deny    Allow from all    Satisfy All</Files>

Try again.

if that doesn't work, send me the url to your site and a $5 papa john's coupon and I'll fix it for you.

 

Nice answer!