Creating and Managing Web Sites

FrontPage contains all the tools you need to create, develop, publish, and maintain a Web site. You can create Web sites online connected to a Web server, offline on your local hard disk, or offline on a network drive. If you create your Web site offline, you must publish it to a Web server to make it available to users. Publishing your Web site entails copying the Web files to the Web server. After your Web site is online, you face the day-to-day challenges of managing it, and FrontPage can help you there, too.

Many of FrontPage's built-in features—searching features, hit counters, discussion groups, dynamic page components, live connections to databases, some kinds of link bars, and much more—require that your server be running FrontPage Server Extensions 2002. FrontPage Server Extensions 2002 is a subset of Office XP Server Extensions. If you don't have a server set up with FPSE or OSE, Microsoft will help you find one: Click File, Publish Web, and then click the indicated hyperlink.

If you have many people working on developing and maintaining a single site, you should consider installing SharePoint Team Services on your server. SharePoint is also a superset of FPSE.

→ For more information about SharePoint Team Services, see Special Edition Using FrontPage 2002, ISBN 0-7897-2512-6.

Creating a Web Site Online with a Web Server

When you create a Web site, FrontPage can help you with a selection of templates and wizards that automate key tasks. The templates and wizards can create the entire file structure, navigation scheme, and consistent design for your new Web site. To create a new Web site, choose File, New, Page Web. The New Page or Web task pane appears; if you choose Web Site Templates, you'll be well on your way.

→ For details on restricting features, see "Choosing Compatibility for Your Web".

Several of the templates and wizards are quite sophisticated:

• Corporate Presence— Includes a home page, a table of contents, a "What's New" section, a press release, information on products and services, feedback, and a search feature.

• Customer Support— Includes a FAQ page, a suggestion box, downloads, a discussion area, a page for technical notes, and interactive forms for filing and responding to customer service questions.

• Discussion— Supports full threaded discussions, with a search feature and a table of contents.

Unlike other Office applications, you must specify a location for your new Web site before you create it (see Figure 37.1). In practice, any location—even a local hard drive—where you have write permission will suffice.s

If you want to encrypt all information to and from FrontPage during your editing session, check the Secure Connection Required (SSL) check box. Your Web server must support SSL connections to use this feature, and the URL may start with https://. Using a secure connection can mitigate the chances of a hacker intercepting the dialogue between Front Page and the Web server. If you have sensitive data on your Web site, such as credit card numbers or customer lists, use a secure connection if your Web server supports it.

Click OK, and FrontPage connects to the Web server to create the files. If the connection requires a username and password, FrontPage first prompts you for the necessary credentials.

Creating an Offline Web Site

To create an offline Web site in a local folder or a folder on a network drive, enter the path to the folder in the Specify the Location of the New Web option list (refer to Figure 37.1).

For example, enter c:Websales to create a Web site on your local c: hard drive. For network drives, you can enter the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) of the shared drive (for example, \DELL2200intranet).

Creating Subwebs

Subwebs are subdirectories of the main Web site. Subwebs can be managed independently; each subweb can have its own access permissions, so you can effectively block authors from working on subwebs other than their own. You might find it useful, for example, to maintain an independent sales subweb that's restricted to sales support staff, who can then implement their own review and approval policies. Subwebs can have their own subwebs.

To create a subweb, you must be connected to a server running FrontPage Server Exten sions 2002 (or Office XP Server Extensions, or SharePoint Team Services). Choose Tools, Server, Administration Home. In the Site Administration dialog box, click Create a Subweb. At that point, you can assign access permission.

If you need help creating subwebs while offline, see "Creating Subwebs" in the "Troubleshooting" section at the end of this chapter.

FrontPage takes a few minutes to create the new subweb. When finished, the subweb appears as a folder with an Earth icon. To open a connection to the subweb, double-click the subweb's icon; FrontPage opens a separate window to the subweb. You now can create new Web pages as usual.

Connecting to Existing FrontPage Web Sites

To connect to an existing FrontPage Web site, choose File, Open. The Open File dialog box appears.

Use the folder navigational tools to locate your folder, or type it in the Folder Name text box. For an online connection to a Web server, type the URL in the Folder Name text box. If required, FrontPage prompts you for the username and password before connecting to the Web server.

If you have used FrontPage with a Web site already, you can use File, Recent Webs to open the Web site again.

Choosing Compatibility for Your Web

FrontPage enables you to design your Web sites for a specific browser, browser version, or server. For example, if you are creating an intranet for your sales force and your salespeople use Internet Explorer 5, you'll want to be sure that your Web site does not contain elements viewable only by Navigator.

Web server features can add even more constraints. For example, only Internet Information Server (IIS) supports Active Server Pages, and, if you plan to move your Web site to another host in the future, you must make sure that it supports your Web site. If you move an IIS-based Web site to a UNIX-based server, such as Linux running the Apache Web server, you might find that many features that you used under IIS need to be reworked for Apache—and conversely.

Choose Tools, Page Options, and click the Compatibility tab (see Figure 37.2) to define the browser and server capabilities that you want to include in your Web site. You can also customize the individual technologies that your targeted environments can support on an item-by-item basis.

Maintaining Accurate Hyperlinks

As your Web site grows and you begin to add more content, you must keep a close watch over the links within your Web site and to other sites. Often, Web pages on other sites move or are removed, and your links no longer work.

Use the FrontPage Broken Hyperlinks report in Reports view for verifying the links within your Web site, as well as the links to other sites. When the report displays, as shown in Figure 37.3, you see a listing of the pages on which FrontPage finds broken or unverified links.

The unverified links are to those pages outside your Web site. You must ask FrontPage to check for them manually. This process can take a bit of time, depending on the number of unverified links and the speed of your network connection. To check the links, click the Verify Hyperlinks in the Current Web button on the Reports toolbar. The Verify Hyperlinks dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 37.4.

Choose the Verify All Hyperlinks option button, and click Start. FrontPage connects to each of the pages and verifies the remote Web server's response. If you're unlucky enough to be watching the screen while FrontPage verifies, you can monitor FrontPage's progress as it does the work in the status bar. If the remote Web server indicates that the page has moved, FrontPage marks the page as broken.

You can stop verification at any point by clicking the Stop toolbar button. To pick up where you left off, click the Verify Hyperlinks toolbar button again and choose Resume Verification.

After FrontPage completes the link verification, double-click the broken links to repair the pages that contain them. If you have the same broken link on several pages, FrontPage can edit all the pages at once with the corrected link. When you double-click a broken link page, the Edit Hyperlink dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 37.5.

In the Edit Hyperlink dialog box, you can jump directly to Page view of the page with the broken link by clicking the Edit Page button.

For links that you edit manually or that FrontPage repairs automatically, the Broken Hyperlinks report marks the new links as Unknown. To verify your corrections, click the Verify Hyperlinks toolbar button, choose Resume Verification, and click Start.