Prerequesits

WebBuild requires the Java 2 Runtime Environment (J2RE), Standard edition version 1.5 or higher (to find out if java is installed type "java -version" at the command prompt). No other libraries or extensions are required.

If you do not have java installed on your system you can download a copy - free of charge - from the following site http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp.

As a Java application, the software should run on both windows and Unix systems (or any other system supporting J2SE 1.5 or above).

Installation and Running

Expand the webbuild.zip file to a location of your choice. Within the zip file there are 2 folders - "Program Files", and "Sites".

The software is contained in "ProgramFiles".

The "Sites" folder contains two sub-folders - "WebBuildHelp" and "WebBuildEmpty". The "WebBuildHelp" contains everything required to create this site. "WebBuildEmpty" contains minimal files to start a new site. (it may be useful to copy this folder to start your site(s)). These two folders each have a simple windows batch file within them (webbuild.bat) to run WebBuild and process the site to re-create the "build" sub-directory (which contains the final .html files). Typically the batch files contain the following lines:

@echo off
echo *
echo *
set jardir=..\..\ProgramFiles
java -jar "%jardir%\webbuild.jar" "%jardir%"
echo *
type BuildWarnings.txt
echo *
type BuildErrors.txt
echo *
echo *
pause

The batch file is designed to run from a sub-folder of the "Sites" folder. If you wish to have your site folders in a different location you will need to make the appropriate changes to the batch file.

You may notice that Webbuild requires one startup option - the folder containing the license file. When you first run WebBuild (or if it can't find the license file) it will locate a 14 day evaluation license.properties file from the Sandbox web site and copy this file to the location specified.

On a windows system double-clicking the batch file will run WebBuild. WebBuild will then look at the the "design" and "content" folders in the directory webbuild.bat is located and rebuild the build folder - to view the the resulting pages - double-click on the build/index.html file and browse as normal.

The contents of the Build folder can be used as is (if the target audience has access to the folder) or, it can be published with a Web Server (such as IIS or Apache), or it can be transferred to your ISP or host site for access via the internet. WebBuild does none of this for you - it is a small clean application, requiring minimal configuration, but it does generate all the html files you need.