Get up to speed on Microsoft® FrontPage®
with a little help from your friends at
EZWAYWEB!
FrontPage Help: for the
absolute beginner
If you
want to save time and get professional results in a hurry; You should
consider taking our 1/2 day FrontPage class:
FrontPage Training
NEW!
Live distance learning.
This page
provides answers to some of the most frequently asked questions and
information to help you avoid common mistakes and 'overlooks' when creating
webs with FrontPage.
First off: Get
FrontPage 2002/2003, don't try to do anything with the express version that
came with Windows 95. Versions older than 2000 should be avoided as well.
FrontPage is less than half of what
you need to create a web site: You
need a web hosting service, this is where your web pages will be located
on the Internet and made available on the World Wide Web. Not just any web
site host will do. You can't use free home page services, or the space web
page space you get with AOL or the cheapest Unix server hosting deals.
The web hosting service that you use must support FrontPage with the
FrontPage Server Extensions. Ok, so you can use FrontPage without
the extensions, but you won't be having any fun with forms and a many
other great time saving features.
Not all web servers that support FrontPage are
created equal: If you want to use all of
the features of FrontPage you need to get a web host that not only will
install and support the server extensions, but is running a Microsoft 2000
Windows server with a recent version of MS Information Server like 4.x or
5.x. You can get the extensions on other types of servers but, FrontPage
is best on a Microsoft server.
Publish, publish,
publish:
Never, ever FTP to a FrontPage web, it can cause the FrontPage
server extensions to stop working. When you use FrontPage you use File,
Publish, and then give your full web address as the destination that you
want to publish to: http://www.mydomain.com FrontPage will then prompt you
for your user name and password. Watch out! If for some reason it doesn't
work FrontPage will default to FTP publishing. You must change the web
address back to http:// every time you try to publish until you are
successful. After that FrontPage will remember the address.
You can 'steal' and convert a web site to a
FrontPage' web: You can import
non-FrontPage web sites with the File, Import command. These can be
converted to FrontPage Webs on your computer, edited, and then published
to a FrontPage sever. Pages that don't end in HTM or HTML can not be
expected to work on the new FrontPage server, forms and the like will have
to be redone the FrontPage way. But, don't worry the FrontPage way is a
breeze compared to the headaches of creating a form with a old fashion CGI
script.
How to get a copy of a FrontPage web on your
computer: To make a copy of a FrontPage
web on your computer: First connect directly to the web site using
FrontPage, File, Open Web, (Open web dialog, click on the Web Folders icon
on the bottom left) type in the URL of the web page http://www.etc.com,
You will be prompted for the user name and password. You are now connected
directly to the web site and you can even edit and save changes using
FrontPage. To make a copy to your hard drive, choose File, Publish and
give the decimation as your hard drive: C:\mywebs\thewebsite this will
place a copy on your hard drive that you may edit. CAUTION: FrontPage may
change the name of files that end in ASP.
Different browsers will display the same
web page in their own way: You must decide
on what browser(s you wish your web page to support. Some Netscape doesn't
display or support some features that IE does. Go to: Tools, page
options, compatibility and make your choices. If you don't have both
Netscape and IE you need to get both to check how your pages look. AOL is
now Netscape so if you cover IE and Netscape you get most of the market.
No software is perfect but the
'shared borders' is a great time saver:
The FrontPage tutorial starts you off with Themes and Navigation bars,
these are the two most useless features of the program. Don't bother with
them. Use the shared borders features to help give your pages a consistent
look and save time editing. Shared borders: Right click with your cursor
on web page screen you are editing in FrontPage. Choose: 'Format', 'Shared
borders'. Try turning on the top and bottom borders first. You can create
headers and menus in these borders. The advantage is that for every page
that needs the same header or menu you can just turn them on! When you
edit them and save them in one page, they are automatically changed for
every page that uses them.
My advise is Don't use Themes:
They don't look professional, and the webs have a habit of 'loosing'
their themes.
Tables:
Just about everything goes in a table. Tables are not just for numbers. If
you don't use tables you will not be able to place anything on your pages
where you want it to be in relation to everything else. Tables can be invisible just set the border thickness
to 0. All good web sites use tables, try this as a learning experience.
Open up web sites with FrontPage to see how they are made, you will see
that all the good ones use tables for everything. Just choose: FILE, OPEN,
and then type in a web address like:
www.yahoo.com the FrontPage editor will 'show' you how the page is
laid out with invisible tables.
Remember you have two
audiences when you create your web pages:
The other one is a robot web crawler or spider. If you want people to find
your pages through search engines you need to create your page with that
in mind. How may times have I seen a page where brand name logo
pictures are pasted all over the page. But nowhere is there any text
that contains the brand name! Search engines can't read pictures! So
anyone searching for information by brand name will never see that page.
Also, hover buttons and the like look cool, but search engines can't read
the links. If you use hover buttons; make sure you put regular links on
all the pages in your web too. Otherwise search engines won't be able to
find all of your pages.
Page Properties:
This is likely one of the most
important dialogs in the whole program. Right Click anywhere on the page
you are editing and open Page Properties. The fist tab 'General'
contains the Title. You never see the title when you are editing the page,
the title of the page appears in the very top of the browser. What is
important about the title is that the search engines display the title in
bold as the first line of your listing. Some time try searching for 'New
Page', "Home Page', or the like you will see many people who have not
bothered to title their page. In addition there is formatting of
backgrounds, sounds, and link colors in this dialog. Save time by using
the feature "Get background info from another page.'
Questions? We can't give
free support all the time but we can usually answer your FrontPage question:
