Welcome to PowerMapper for Windows 95 and NT, a great new way to create active maps of your web site. This chapter introduces you to PowerMapper. If you want to create a map right away, jump to Creating a Map.

Installing PowerMapper

To install PowerMapper you need:

Using the Web Installer

  1. Locate the web installer file (mapdem20.exe or mapstd20.exe or mappro20.exe)
  2. Run it by double-clicking or use the right mouse button menu.
  3. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Installing from Floppy

  1. Insert the PowerMapper floppy into your disk drive.
  2. Click Start on the Windows taskbar and choose Run.
  3. Type A:SETUP in the text box and click OK.
  4. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Creating a Map

You can create maps as soon as you've installed PowerMapper.

  1. Click Start on the Windows taskbar and choose Programs:PowerMapper 2.0
  2. Enter your name and company into the Registration dialogue box (this doesn't appear in Evaluation copies).
  3. Browse to the site you want to map using the browser in the right hand window pane or type the site URL into the location box on the tool bar and hit the Enter key.
  4. Choose Map: New Map from the menu - PowerMapper crawls round your chosen site and draws a map. Crawling round a large site takes a long time so it's best to start with a small site like http://www.electrum.co.uk
  5. You can save the map to disk using the File: Save command. This produces a Site Map file containing site structure information and HTML and GIF files that you can upload to a web server.

Using a Map

Once you've created and saved a map, you can use it on your web server. Saving a map creates a .SITE file and a directory containing the map pages. You only need to upload the directory to your server, and create a link to the first page of the map (the HTML file with the shortest name.) See How it Works for an explanation of the files created. You don't need any plug-ins or Java applets to view the maps - any modern graphical browser will be able to use them. See the FAQ for a list of browsers that are known to work with site maps.