FrontPage

Introduction to Microsoft FrontPage
Steps to Enable Microsoft FrontPage with Your Domain
What Happens in Your Account when you Enable FrontPage
Using Microsoft FrontPage
Publishing with FrontPage
FrontPage troubleshooting

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 virtually 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.

Steps to Enable Microsoft FrontPage with Your Domain

Only the server administrator (this is NOT the site administrator!) can enable FrontPage extensions (for free!). If you wish to use FrontPage and its extensions, please send an email to support@uniweb.be. Once enabled, your site administrator can enable or disable FrontPage extensions for the users of your domain.

What Happens in Your Account when you Enable FrontPage

When Microsoft FrontPage extensions are enabled for your domain, several new folders and files are created in your web folder. Please do not edit, delete, move, or rename any of these files or folders. Doing so will probably cause FrontPage to stop working correctly with your account. Any folder beginning with "_vti" contains important files which are needed to utilize Microsoft FrontPage with your account.

Using Microsoft FrontPage with UniWeb 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 does have certain advantages as far as ease and speed are concerned, 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. 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 97:
     
     1. You will see two input fields. In the first one labeled "Destination Web Server or File location" enter your domain name such as www.domainname.be (all lower-case)
     2. Leave the second field as the default <Root Web> or leave it blank.
     3. Publish your web by clicking OK.
   
   
   • If you are using FrontPage 98:
     
     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.domainname.be (all lower-case)
     3. Click the OK button, and the next OK button to initiate publishing.
        
   
   
   • If you are using FrontPage 2000:
     
     1. Specify the location for publishing your Web by typing the path or clicking the Browse button and then selecting the location.
        Here are examples of locations to which you can publish:
        
        • Hard drive: C:\directory\
        • Network drive: \server\share\path\
        • An intranet Web server or Personal Web Server: http://servername/path/
        • Web presence provider (WPP) or Internet service provider (ISP): http://www.wppname.com/~folder/ or ftp.wppname.com/~folder/

        
        Note There are two methods of publishing to your Web hosting service, but both work the same way. If the Web hosting service has FrontPage Server Extensions installed on their server, you just enter the address (or URL of your Web site), as you would when viewing it in your browser. If FrontPage Server Extensions are not installed on the server, you can use FTP (file transfer protocol) to copy the files to the server.

5. FrontPage will start publishing, and you will be prompted for a username and password. Enter your UniWeb username and password and click OK.

That should be it. At this point FrontPage publishes your site to your UniWeb account online. If you are not publishing for the first time, or you are publishing a sub web, the steps are essentially the same. If you have problems with this procedure, (such as FrontPage invoking the Web Publishing Wizard instead of publishing) take a look at trouble shooting section below.

FrontPage Troubleshooting

The advantage of using FrontPage for creating and publishing your site is the ease with which such tasks can be done. However, as with any program, there are commonly made mistakes to watch out for. Here are some simple tips that can help you prevent the most common snags when using Microsoft FrontPage.

• Make sure that you have established an Internet connection when you attempt to publish your site. If you do not have an Internet connection established, FrontPage will invoke the Microsoft Publishing Wizard or possibly report other errors. If this happens, cancel the publishing procedure, establish an Internet connection, and try again.
• Do not attempt to use the Microsoft Publishing Wizard to publish your site. It is surprisingly difficult to use, and can potentially cause problems with your FrontPage web. Instead, publish through the FrontPage Explorer which is easier to use in comparison.
• Do not use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to publish your site. FrontPage expects that webs will be published through the FrontPage Explorer. If you use FTP, components of your web (webbots in particular) may not function properly.
• When publishing your pages, list your domain in lower-case letters such as: www.yourdomainname.be.   Normally domain names are not case-sensitive, but using upper-case letters when publishing may not work properly.
• If you have installed AOL (America OnLine) software after installing FrontPage, FrontPage may not function properly, may automatically invoke the Microsoft Publishing Wizard when you attempt to publish, or may possibly report other errors. If you experience this, you will need to reinstall the FrontPage Personal Web Server.
• If your web browser uses proxy settings in order to connect to the web, you will need to enter your proxy settings in FrontPage as well. To do so, go to Tools=>Options=>Proxies and enter the http proxy in the following format: proxyatyourISP.com:port_Number