SiteSpinner Tutorials: iHost VM Trial Sites

Setting up a Trial Site

This tutorial guides you through the process of publishing your project to an iHostVM trial site. IHost VM has partnered with Virtual Mechanics to provide free trial sites for VM product users. This feature may not be available in all versions of SiteSpinner.

The trial site is one-time only which means that you can publish only once to it. If you want to make changes after you publish, you can do so in another free trial site.

This walk-though assumes you are publishing a small project like the Hello World project, but you could publish a larger project, like these tutorials -- it will just take longer.

For some preliminaries, see the Publishing your Project tutorial.

Activate

If you don't have an iHostVM tab showing in the Publisher, activate the iHostVM options like this:

Open Options > Workspace Options > Advanced; and
Check the box "Show IHostVM options when publishing".

This will activate the iHostVM options in the Publisher -- the most obvious change being a fourth tab marked 'HostVM'

Profile tab

In the Publisher, set up your Publish Profile like this. The only change from a normal publish is that you click the button Free iHostVM Trial.

Pages tab

Set up the Pages tab like this. Make sure you have the Gather option selected.

More in Publish > Pages Tab

Make sure you are connected to the Internet, then click the Publish Button.

There will be a blur of activity for a second, which is your site being published to your local disk, then you will see the window below.

Enter your details

The form wants your:

First name
Last name
E-mail Address

Fill out those details, make sure you are still connected to the Internet and click Next >.

You will see some activity which is your computer establishing contact with iHostVM, and then transferring (uploading) the files for your project. For a small project, this will take no more than a few seconds, even on dialup.

If it takes a lot longer than this, make sure you are still connected to the Internet. Also make sure your don't have a firewall that is blocking the transfer. More details.

Then after a successful transfer, you will see the following window:

Click the View Site Now button to view your web site in your browser. You should be now published!

Add your site to your (short term!) favorites, or otherwise save the URL of your site as the window recommends. IHost VM will send you an automated e-mail which will give you this information again, in case you lose it. At the time of writing, iHostVM will send you just a single e-mail -- they will not spam you.

IHostVM tab

You can also use a trial site by clicking on the iHostVM tab and then clicking Try a Free Site. Make sure your current project is the one you want to upload to the free site.

If you click OK, the procedure is the same as if you clicked Publish from the Pages tab part of this walk-through.

See also
Publishing Questions FAQ