I had two problems. I couldn't edit sales pages, templates, or other material here at WA or that I purchased from third parties. And when I finally figured that out, I couldn't get them to show up on the internet. I kept getting the Plesk Apache 2.0 Default page. Here's how I solved both problems --

My sales pages, thank you pages, and templates usually arrived in the form of two files and a folder. Actually, some came in one .zip file which extracted into something like:

Index.html

style.css

a folder name "images" (no quotes)

Extracting compressed files is beyond what I'm going to cover here. If you need help extracting .zip or .rar files, do a Google search. You need a program like WinRAR or one of the many free file compression/extraction programs available for downloading.

So great. I had these files. How to edit them?

First I tried Site Rubix, Microsoft Publisher 2003, WYSIWYG Web Builder 5.0, XSitePro2, Weeble.com, Webstarts.com and a few other website development or website editing programs. And not one of them would load my template! I got messages like "These files created with a later version of XXX", or some kind of error messages. I was stuck.

So I wrote to Kyle and posted my problem on my Blog and in the Forum. I also wrote a "trouble ticket" to the guy who sold me the sales pages. He never replied. But Kyle and Magicstudios and Welshy did. Thanks again, guys. They suggested I try NVU or Dreamweaver.

Dreamweaver I tried around 2 years ago. For me it was not only very expensive, but it was almost impossible to learn. About as difficult as Photoshop. Might be a great program for full time website developers, but it wasn't for me.

NVU, though, is an open source program and seems to me pretty easy to learn. And it's latest version is Kompozer. Free. Just download it and go. So I did. And it worked!!! That little sucker -- Kompozer --has opened everything I've thrown at it so far. It opens WA templates, third party sales pages, third party templates, thank you pages, and even my first website that I did with Publisher 2003 and which nothing else would ever touch.

It feels so gosh darned good when a problem that has stumped you for weeks finally gets blown away, doesn't it?

So I tried to upload my newly edited material to my website at WA Hosting. But I was doing something wrong. When I browsed to my site on the internet, all I saw was that darned Apache 2.0 Default Page from Plesk. The default page talks about adding content to the /var/www/html/ directory and following the instructions in the /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf directory. What the heck is that??!!

I can't find those directories and have no idea what that paragraph is talking about, but since I'm no longer getting that Apache default page, I guess i'm just going to leave it there. If anyone can add any info about those directories -- what they are, where to find them, what to do with them -- I'd sure appreciate it. But I don't know, so I can't make the answer part of this resource.

How did I solve the "default page problem"? Following suggestions from Welshy, I used Core, Plesk File Director and Firefox FTP to be absolutely sure the /httpdocs directory was clear of all files. Then I uploaded the index.html files and style.css files just the way they were. Then I uploaded the folder with the images inside -- all to the /httpdocs folder. I didn't upload the images separately. I uploaded the whole images folder, and it ended up as a subdirectory (folder) inside /httpdocs.

And it worked! I opened Firefox, browsed to my site, and there it was! I got the page I had uploaded! Sometimes it apparently takes Plesk a few minutes to actually get your uploads into your folder and update its indexes. Doesn't make sense to me, but if you don't see your upload on the internet right away, come back in 10 or 15 minutes.

One more thing -- make sure your .html file is called "index.html". (no quotes). If it's called anything else, like a name, or "welcome.html", you'll get the Plesk Default Page again. Your .html file must be called "index.html". Thanks again, Welshy.

So that's it. I guess now those other programs intentionally lock out files that are not theirs? I had never thought about it before, but I guess that's what was happening. Anybody know anything different? For now, I'll stick with Komposer. If anyone has information on how to move web pages created with Komposer back into other editing programs besides Dreamweaver, I'd appreciate a comment or PM.

I hope not too many other newbies have had to wrestle with these simple and basic problems. And if you are wrestling with them, I hope you find this resource.

Cheers --

Wizard