WebMaestro - The Webmaster's Best Friend
Contents
Introduction
I wrote this software to help manage this site; mostly to publish changes for me instead of having to do it by hand in Windows and Internet Explorer. Like most people, I work on a local copy of my web site, and publish changes as I make them.
WebMaestro models the process, by presenting a menu of local files, and uploading them to the server on command. Even better, it tracks changes to your files so you don't have to.
The software is pretty straight-forward and easy to use, although it has some interesting functionality. WebMaestro is freeware, with no registration. I wrote this to save myself some time, it's worked better than I could have hoped for, and I'm releasing it to give something back to the community.
Features
- Uploads files to a web server on a background thread, via FTP. Any number of files can be queued, and will upload one after the next until the job is finished.
- Tracks which files need to be uploaded.
- Search the files in your site by keyword.
- A built-in web browser to verify the changes you're publishing.
- A page text analyzer, to help determine search keywords and help enforce stylistic consistency.
File Tracking
WebMaestro is able to track which files have changed, and which haven't. This makes it extremely easy to keep the server version of a web site up to date with the development version. There are two ways this is accomplished:
While it's running, WebMaestro subscribes to file-change notifications from Windows. This gives very high performance compared to polling the files repeatedly.
When you leave WebMaestro, it stores a list of the files in your site, with the date and time each file was last uploaded in XML format; when you start the program, it compares this date against the last modified date returned by Windows.
Search Filters
WebMaestro was born out of my frustration at changing a file in Dreamweaver, then having to dig through folders to upload it to the server. Although file tracking solves this problem, it can still be useful to find a group of files by name, regardless of their folder.
Quick Preview
Quick Preview shows you a file's contents when you click the its node in the tree. Web Maestro can display most image and text files, including animated gifs.
The preview can be shown directly under the tree, or on a separate tab page, at the user's convenience. When shown under the file tree, the preview area can be resized, or hidden altogether by clicking the sizing line.
Installation
Click to download the software, then unzip the file ( WebMaestro.exe ) into the folder of your choosing. That's all it takes to install WebMaestro; 
when you run it for the first time, you'll be presented with a window asking you to enter the following information:
- Site Label: If you use WebMaestro to track multiple sites, use this field to distinguish them.
- Local Path: The folder to watch for changes to.
- Server Path: The location to upload files to. Enter the site's root folder; if a file in a subfolder is changed, it will be added to the same folder on the server. ( Example: C:\MySite\Images\Shared\Logo.png will be sent to ftp://MySite/Images/Shared/Logo.png )
- Method: FTP or Windows Copy
- Index File: The list of files in a web site - used for tracking changes that happened while WebMaestro wasn't running.
- Credentials: The username and password required to gain access to the server.
Click the OK button, and WebMaestro is ready for action. Please note several XML files may be created in the folder you run the software from.
WebMaestro is available for Windows only, and needs the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 to run. If you don't already have this installed, it's available through Windows Update. 
Uninstall
Removing WebMaestro is as easy as installing it. There are no changes to your registry, no dll files hidden away in the \Windows\System32 folder. All of the information WebMaestro needs to store across sessions ( ie while it's closed ) is kept in xml files in the same folder. Simply close the program, and delete it's files; there will be no traces left on your system.