FrontPage Usability Issues

Helpful Links

Q & A:

How do I make a website? There are a few ways you can make a website.

1.  Pay someone to make it for you.
2.  Learn how to program HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
3.  Get/buy a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web page editor, and make your own website without learning the HTML code.

Can I use Microsoft FrontPage to build my site?

Yes. Frontpage provides FrontPage 2002/2000/98 server extensions free of charge for those who want to build their sites using the Microsoft FrontPage program. For more comprehensive information, consult the FrontPage help files, or the Microsoft web site.

Introduction to Microsoft FrontPage

Microsoft FrontPage is a sophisticated Web authoring tool, which includes a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web page editor, giving you the ability to create impressive web pages without needing to know the intricacies of the HTML formatting language. FrontPage can edit existing web pages or create new ones from scratch. It also contains a 'wizard' utility which can create an entire site for you based on your answers to plain English questions.

We support ALL of the Microsoft FrontPage "server extensions", including all of the web management and publishing capabilities, and all of the standard Microsoft "WebBots" which can be used to add additional functionality to your web site.

Our NT/Windows 2000 servers support ASP pages, ODBC and SQL database connections. Other hosting companies' Unix servers do not natively support these functions and FrontPage extensions.  An all Microsoft hosting solution works the best.  Our clients tell us everday when they switch from a Unix based provider to our Windows based web servers.


Steps to enable Microsoft FrontPage with your domain

There aren't any - you're ready to go right out of the box.
Since your site is running on a Windows NT/2000 server it is automatically configured to run the FrontPage extensions.


What happens in your account when you enable FrontPage

When you enable Microsoft FrontPage extensions for your Domain name, several directories and new files are created in your directory . Please do not edit, delete, move, or rename any of these files or directories. Doing so will probably cause FrontPage to break and not work correctly with your account. Any directory beginning with "_vti" contains important files which are needed to utilize Microsoft FrontPage with your account.


Using Microsoft FrontPage

Using Microsoft FrontPage with Frontpage is the same as when you created the original web site content on your local machine through the Personal Web Server. Once you have published your web, when you start up FrontPage, you have the ability to open the version of the web on your local machine, or the remote version on our server. If you select to open the version on our server, you can open, edit, and save files directly to our server. Making changes directly to the files on does have advantages as far as ease and speed, but we generally recommend that you manage your site by making changes locally and uploading your changes. The advantage of this is that you will always have a local copy of your files, and you will not need to have a continuous connection to the Internet while modifying your site.


Publishing with FrontPage

Publishing your web site with FrontPage Explorer is fairly easy. Before you start, make sure that you have configured your account to be FrontPage enabled, and that your domain name is currently active. can proceed by following these steps:

  1. Open FrontPage Explorer.
  2. Open the FrontPage web located on your local machine that you intend to publish to your domain.
  3. Select "Publish FrontPage Web..." from the file menu.
  4. At this point you will be presented with a dialog box.

    If you are using FrontPage 98/2000:

    1. You should see one input field labeled as the location to publish your FrontPage web. If you do not see this, click on "More Webs..."
    2. Insert your domain name such as www.yourdomain.com (all lower-case)
    3. Click the OK button, and the next OK button to initiate publishing.
  5. FrontPage will start publishing, and you will be prompted for a username and password. Enter your username and password and click OK.
That should be it. At this point FrontPage publishes your site to your account online. If you are not publishing for the first time, or you are publishing a sub web, the steps are essentially the same. 
How to Check the Size of a Web Site

  1. Locate the folder containing your site
  2. Right click on it
  3. Choose Properties (This will show you the current size of your site)

Why use FrontPage to design your site?

Microsoft FrontPage
The Leading Web Site Creation and Management Tool

The Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Web site creation and management tool gives you everything you need to create and manage exactly the site you want, whether you're creating a personal Web page or a corporate Internet or intranet site.

FrontPage 2002 gives you the power to:

  • Add dynamic content with automatic Web content from MSN, MSNBC, 
    Expedia, and Microsoft bCentral.
  • Quickly and easily display photos and images.
  • Enhance graphics with PowerPoint-like drawing tools.