30
Microsoft FrontPage 2003 SAVVY
Microsoft
FrontPage 2003
S A V V Y
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Microsoft®
FrontPage®
2003C H R I S T I A N C R U M L I S H | K A T E J . C H A S E
S A N F R A N C I S C O | L O N D O N
S A V V Y™
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A s s o c i a t e P u b l i s h e r : DAN BRODNITZ
A c q u i s i t i o n s E d i t o r : ELLEN DENDY
D e v e l o p m e n t a l E d i t o r : JIM COMPTON
P r o d u c t i o n E d i t o r : MAE LUM
T e c h n i c a l E d i t o r : MOLLY HOLZSCHLAG
P r o d u c t i o n M a n a g e r : AMY CHANGAR
C o p y e d i t o r : SARAH LEMAIRE
C o m p o s i t o r : MAUREEN FORYS, HAPPENSTANCE TYPE-O-RAMA
G r a p h i c I l l u s t r a t o r : CARYL GORSKA, GORSKA DESIGN
P r o o f r e a d e r s : EMILY HSUAN, DARCEY MAURER, LAURIE O’CONNELL, NANCY RIDDIOUGH,
SARAH TANNEHILL, MONIQUE VAN DEN BERG
I n d e x e r : JOHN LEWIS
C o v e r , I n t e r i o r , a n d T e c h n i c a l I l l u s t r a t i o n D e s i g n e r : CARYL GORSKA, GORSKA DESIGN
C o v e r P h o t o g r a p h e r : ROBERT J. BIRNBACH
Copyright © 2004 SYBEX Inc., 1151 Marina Village Parkway, Alameda, CA 94501. World rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or repro-
duced in any way, including but not limited to photocopy, photograph, magnetic, or other
record, without the prior agreement and written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Card Number: 2003106715
ISBN: 0-7821-4238-9
SYBEX and the SYBEX logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of SYBEX Inc. in
the United States and/or other countries.
Savvy is a trademark of SYBEX Inc.
Screen reproductions produced with FullShot 99. FullShot 99 © 1991–1999 Inbit Incorporated.
All rights reserved.
FullShot is a trademark of Inbit Incorporated.
Internet screen shot(s) using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 reprinted by permission from
Microsoft Corporation.
TRADEMARKS: SYBEX has attempted throughout this book to distinguish proprietary trade-
marks from descriptive terms by following the capitalization style used by the manufacturer.
The author and publisher have made their best efforts to prepare this book, and the content is
based upon final release software whenever possible. Portions of the manuscript may be based
upon pre-release versions supplied by software manufacturer(s). The author and the publisher
make no representation or warranties of any kind with regard to the completeness or accuracy
of the contents herein and accept no liability of any kind including but not limited to perform-
ance, merchantability, fitness for any particular purpose, or any losses or damages of any kind
caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly from this book.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Dear Reader,
Thank you for choosing Microsoft FrontPage 2003 Savvy. This book is part of a new
wave of Sybex graphics and web design books, all written by outstanding authors—artists
and teachers who really know their stuff and have a clear vision of the audience they’re
writing for.
Founded in 1976, Sybex is the oldest independent computer book publisher. More than
twenty-five years later, we’re committed to producing a full line of exceptional graphics
books. With each title, we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the
paper we print on, to the writers and photographers we work with, our goal is to bring you
the best web design books available.
I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested in hearing your
feedback on how we’re doing. To let us know what you think about this, or any other Sybex
book, please visit us at www.sybex.com. Once there, go to the product page, click Submit a
Review, and fill out the questionnaire. Your input is greatly appreciated.
Please also visit www.sybex.com to learn more about the rest of our growing graphics line.
Best regards,
Dan Brodnitz
Associate Publisher
Sybex Inc.
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Acknowledgments
Writing a book this long, this detailed, and this timely is a labor of many hands and
minds. I’d like to acknowledge the contributions of those who helped in many different ways.
If I’ve forgotten to mention any names, please forgive me. ■ First, I have to thank Briggs
Nisbet for her forbearance during a very difficult and challenging writing schedule. Without
her love and support, none of this would have been possible. ■ Thanks to my literary agent,
Danielle Jatlow of Waterside Productions, who kept the heat on or off me, as the case may
be, and motivated me to do my best possible work. I’d also like to thank Maureen Maloney,
also of Waterside, for processing my checks so efficiently. ■ At Sybex, I’d like to thank Associ-
ate Publisher Dan Brodnitz and Acquisitions Editor Ellen Dendy, who convinced me to do
this book. Jim Compton’s developmental editing sought perpetually for greater clarity, more
evocative explanations, and more vivid examples. He strengthened this book immeasurably
and when I was low, he encouraged me. Production Editor Mae Lum handled the thankless
task of shepherding me through a series of missed deadlines with unfailing grace. Copyeditor
Sarah Lemaire tempered and tamed my off-topic rants and haphazard demonstrations, turn-
ing them into well-reasoned lessons and clear step-by-step tutorials. ■ When they told me
Molly Holzschlag was to be our technical editor, I almost panicked. How would I get away
now with lazy generalizations and received hearsay? True to form, Molly held my feet to the
fire and demanded the highest standards of clarity, evidence, and proof. Her commitment to
web standards and to web-design professionalism rubbed off on my chapters to my credit.
Those chapters would be infinitely less effective without her input, exceptions, and advice. ■
Maureen Forys of Happenstance Type-O-Rama did the actual page makeup, which is tricky
in a design as complicated and yet as elegant as this book’s; I appreciate her skillful work. A
lot of other people at Sybex helped on this project without interacting with me directly, and
I’d like to acknowledge their contributions (most are listed on the copyright page) as well.
Thank you all! ■ I learned a lot doing web consulting with the now defunct Groundswell. The
Groundswell ’hogs went through a
lot together, in the trenches of the dotcom boom-and-bust, and I know I’ll be working with
people I met there on and off for the rest of my life. Before Groundswell, I knew how to
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throw together a one-person website, but from my colleagues there, I learned how to col-
laborate on large-scale production-ready sites. It was quite thrilling. Thanks also to clients
at Sprint, Visa USA, Executive Greetings, PeopleSoft, and Seybold, whose real-world proj-
ects gave me all kinds of work to sink my teeth into. Similarly, I’d like to thank the people I
worked with at Enterpulse (another consultancy), which has survived the worst part of the
downturn and will probably be around for a long time. Lastly, I’d like to thank the people at
Open Publishing for supporting all of my writing work.
—Christian Crumlish
Let me readily second the accolades Christian has already tendered for our superb
Sybex and Waterside support crews, and let me add the name of David Fugate, my literary
representative in this endeavor. ■ But permit me to also thank the doctors, nurses, and sup-
port staff of Central Vermont Medical Center who helped me survive severe double pneumo-
nia and an accompanying life-threatening syndrome with an all-too-high mortality rate just as
this book was going into production. With their able assistance and kindness, I outlived two
weeks in intensive care and all that hospital food. ■ Finally, my profound thanks to my part-
ner, John, and the endless support offered by my friends and family.
—Kate J. Chase
Sybex would like to thank indexer John Lewis for his valuable contribution to
this book.
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About the Authors
The design, care, and feeding of good websites is just part of what Kate J. Chase
does, although it’s integral to all of it because she works online. She got her start in cyber-
space on Fidonet, an all-volunteer worldwide network of online enthusiasts in the late 1980s.
As the Internet grew, Kate led and managed technical support communities for America
Online, The Microsoft Network, and ZDNet.
A frequent beta tester, voracious online participant and reader, and active web commu-
nity consultant, Kate has also authored, co-authored, edited, or contributed to more than a
dozen technical references, including Instant E-Commerce (Sybex, 2001) and PC Disaster
and Recovery (Sybex, 2002). With her interests ranging from operating systems to applica-
tions to PC hardware to the effects of technology on our all-too-human lives, Kate has writ-
ten for newspapers, magazines, and dozens of online venues in addition to writing books.
Born in a log cabin on the Missouri River… no wait, wrong bio. Born and raised on the
mean streets of New York City, Christian Crumlish matriculated at the school of hard knocks
(okay, Princeton) and has since pursued a number of exciting career options, including typ-
ist, gopher, editor, and small-business owner. Since the early 1990s, Christian has been writ-
ing about technology, business, popular culture, politics, and the media. He co-founded the
webzine Enterzone in 1994 and a web-solutions consultancy in 1996. He has registered far
too many domain names, most of which will probably never see the light of day.
Christian has packaged books and e-books, consulted on matters of information architec-
ture and content-management strategy with Fortune 500 companies, represented other
authors as a literary agent, and written nearly 20 books on technology, the Internet, and web
development. He has taught Seybold seminars, is contributing to the Lockergnome RSS
Resource weblog, and is writing a syndicated column about web design and development
called “Above the Fold.”
Christian is also the author of Dreamweaver MX/Fireworks MX Savvy (Sybex, 2002).
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Introduction ■ xix
P A R T I ■ P L A N N I N G Y O U R P R O J E C T A N D S E T T I N G U P F R O N T P A G E 1
Chapter 1 ■ Planning and Preparing for a Web Project 3
Chapter 2 ■ Setting Up Your Workspace 23
Chapter 3 ■ Web Pages Deconstructed 43
Chapter 4 ■ Defining Your Website 57
Chapter 5 ■ Gathering Content and Working with a Team 85
P A R T I I ■ B U I L D I N G A W E B P A G E 1 0 3
Chapter 6 ■ Creating a New Web Page 105
Chapter 7 ■ Working Through Page Layout 127
Chapter 8 ■ Inserting and Formatting Text 167
Chapter 9 ■ Working with Graphics 201
Chapter 10 ■ Inserting and Maintaining Hyperlinks 229
Chapter 11 ■ Implementing Your Navigation Scheme 253
Chapter 12 ■ Working with Dynamic Web Templates 277
P A R T I I I ■ A D D I N G D Y N A M I C C O N T E N T 2 9 5
Chapter 13 ■ Adding Animation and Multimedia 297
Chapter 14 ■ Inserting ActiveX Controls and Other Advanced Objects 317
Chapter 15 ■ Building Forms 337
P A R T I V ■ D E V E L O P I N G W E B A P P L I C A T I O N S 3 6 7
Chapter 16 ■ An Overview of Database-Backed Sites 369
Chapter 17 ■ Working Directly with Markup and Scripts 397
Chapter 18 ■ Developing Data-Driven Websites 427
Chapter 19 ■ Adding Automatic Web Components 461
Chapter 20 ■ Promoting Community with Discussions 481
C O N T E N T S A T A G L A N C E
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P A R T V ■ S I T E A D M I N I S T R A T I O N F R O M S T A R T T O F I N I S H 4 9 9
Chapter 21 ■ Setting Up the Back-End Interface 501
Chapter 22 ■ Enabling Content Management 531
Chapter 23 ■ Going Live 545
Chapter 24 ■ Maintaining and Administering a Site 559
Appendix A ■ Installing a Web Server 573
Appendix B ■ Online Resources 593
Index ■ 605
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Introduction xix
P A R T I ■ P L A N N I N G Y O U R P R O J E C T A N D S E T T I N G U P F R O N T P A G E 1
Chapter 1 ■ Planning and Preparing for a Web Project 3
How FrontPage Helps You Prepare 4
Questions You Must Answer 6
Brainstorming Your Concept 14
Getting Started 22
Chapter 2 ■ Setting Up Your Workspace 23
Getting Oriented 24
Changing the View 27
Customizing Your Workspace 35
Planning for Accessibility 40
From Page to Site 41
Chapter 3 ■ Web Pages Deconstructed 43
The Elements of a Web Page 44
Working with Content 45
Designing for the Web 47
Setting Up a Navigation Scheme 52
Time for Groundbreaking 55
Chapter 4 ■ Defining Your Website 57
Further Developing the Site Design 58
Setting Up Your Website 60
Dynamic Web Templates 67
Using Themes 67
Hands On: Creating Your Own Theme 72
Considering Your Navigation 73
Contents
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Setting Up a Web Server 75
Going Forth From Here 84
Chapter 5 ■ Gathering Content and Working with a Team 85
Taking an Inventory of Content 86
Creating Reusable Web Content 92
There’s No “I” in Team 94
Version Control with Check-in/Check-out 95
Teamwork with Windows SharePoint Services 98
Enough with the Planning, Already 102
P A R T I I ■ B U I L D I N G A W E B P A G E 1 0 3
Chapter 6 ■ Creating a New Web Page 105
Starting a New Web Page 106
Hands On: Building a New Page with the Help of a Wizard 109
Setting Up Your New Page 113
Applying Themes 117
Working with Style Sheets 118
Adding a Page Transition 124
Doing Page Layout 126
Chapter 7 ■ Working Through Page Layout 127
Test, Learn, and Enjoy 128
Selecting and Fine-Tuning a Predefined Layout or Theme 129
Page Layout with Tables 132
Page Layout with Cascading Style Sheets 144
Page Layout with Frames 157
Hands On: Setting Up Frames for Your Site 160
Anchor Points or Bookmarks and the Positioning Toolbar 164
All the Text Content That’s Fit to Format 166
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Chapter 8 ■ Inserting and Formatting Text 167
The Importance of Effective Formatting 168
Working with Text and Formatting 171
Working with Style 188
Hands On: Adding Style Rules and Applying Style 189
Repurposing Office Content 193
Hands On: Copying Material from Microsoft Word and PowerPoint 196
Picture It 200
Chapter 9 ■ Working with Graphics 201
Creating Graphics 202
GIF, JPEG, and PNG File Formats 206
Inserting Graphics into a Web Page 207
Hands On: Inserting and Positioning a Picture 210
Editing Graphics 218
Creating a Photo Gallery 225
Tracing a Page Design 225
Connecting Pages 227
Chapter 10 ■ Inserting and Maintaining Hyperlinks 229
Fundamental Concepts 230
Inserting Links 233
Creating a Bookmark 240
Using an Image as a Link 241
Creating an Image Map 242
Modifying Links 245
Controlling Hyperlink Colors and Effects 246
Managing Links 248
From Deep Structure to Interface 252
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Chapter 11 ■ Implementing Your Navigation Scheme 253
Navigation Savvy 254
Using Navigation View 256
Major Navigation Scheme Tools 260
FrontPage Navigation: Go it Alone or Improvise? 263
Creating Navigation/Link Bars 263
Creating Navigation Menus 265
Troubleshooting Your Navigation 270
Creating DHTML Navigation Menus 271
Inserting Menus 272
Leaving Breadcrumbs 273
From the Static to the Dynamic 275
Chapter 12 ■ Working with Dynamic Web Templates 277
About Dynamic Web Templates 278
Creating a Dynamic Web Template 282
Hands On: Designing a Dynamic Web Template 282
Applying the Dynamic Web Template 289
Modifying a Dynamic Web Template 293
Getting More Dynamic With Your Site 294
P A R T I I I ■ A D D I N G D Y N A M I C C O N T E N T 2 9 5
Chapter 13 ■ Adding Animation and Multimedia 297
Creating Image Rollovers 298
Creating Animated GIF Files 304
Rules of the Road for Web Animation 305
Hands On: Creating an Animated GIF 306
Adding Other Media to Your Site 309
Using Multimedia Add-ins 310
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Inserting Other Types of Dynamic Content 314
Man Those Controls! 316
Chapter 14 ■ Inserting ActiveX Controls and Other Advanced Objects 317
Consider Your Audience 318
ActiveX Controls 318
Hands On: Using ActiveX Controls/Office Web Components to Add a Web-Based Spreadsheet 324
Other Advanced Controls 326
Testing and Troubleshooting Controls and Objects 334
Taking Up a (Data) Collection 335
Chapter 15 ■ Building Forms 337
Data Collection vs. Navigation 338
How Forms Work 338
Planning Your Forms 340
Anatomy of a Web Form 342
Creating a Form 354
Hands On: Creating a Jump Menu 359
Handling Forms at the Back End 362
Next Stop, Faster Scripting 365
P A R T I V ■ D E V E L O P I N G W E B A P P L I C A T I O N S 3 6 7
Chapter 16 ■ An Overview of Database-Backed Sites 369
An Introduction to Database-Backed Sites 370
Designing and Testing Web Applications 371
Choosing an Application Server Model and Scripting Language 372
Setting Up an Application Server 373
Working with ASP, ASP.NET, JScript, and VBScript 377
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Working with XML 384
Right Down to the Code 395
Chapter 17 ■ Working Directly with Markup and Scripts 397
Working with Added HTML 398
Using Code Snippets to Store Repeated Code Blocks 405
Using Microsoft Visual Basic Editor 410
Adding VBScript, JavaScript, and JScript 413
Troubleshooting Scripts and Markup 425
Give Us Your Data 426
Chapter 18 ■ Developing Data-Driven Websites 427
Working with Databases 428
Preparing a Database 430
How FrontPage Views Data 433
Defining a Data Source 434
Working with Data Connections 435
Working with SharePoint Data Views 445
Working with Web Parts 451
Hands On: Combining Data Views 453
Troubleshooting Database Connections 454
Working Directly with SQL 456
Bells and Whistles 459
Chapter 19 ■ Adding Automatic Web Components 461
Using Office Web Components 462
Adding Office Web Components to Your Site 465
Hands On: Creating a Web-Based Interactive Spreadsheet 472
Connecting to Web Services Using .NET 474
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FrontPage Automatic Web Content Components 476
Up for Discussion 478
Chapter 20 ■ Promoting Community with Discussions 481
Defining Discussions 482
Setting Up a Discussion 483
Managing Your Discussions 496
Empowering a Living Site 498
P A R T V ■ S I T E A D M I N I S T R A T I O N F R O M S T A R T T O F I N I S H 4 9 9
Chapter 21 ■ Setting Up the Back-End Interface 501
Establishing User Administration 502
About Login Pages and Processes 514
Spare Yourself the (Web) Winter of Dis-Content 529
Chapter 22 ■ Enabling Content Management 531
Defining a Content-Management Strategy 532
Content Updates with Dynamic Web Templates 535
There are Templates…and Templates 535
Integrating a Weblog 536
Choosing a Weblog Tool 539
Working with Weblog Templates 541
Hands On: Adding a SharePoint Weblog to Your Site 542
Last-Minute Checklist 543
Chapter 23 ■ Going Live 545
Checking Browser Compatibility 546
Meeting Accessibility Standards 552
Quality Assurance and Final Testing 555
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Turnover: From Staging to Production 556
The Long Haul 558
Chapter 24 ■ Maintaining and Administering a Site 559
Making Updates and Corrections 560
Hands On: Creating and Revising a Site Map 562
Managing Users 565
Journaling, Site Versioning, and Rollback 566
Handing the Product Off to a Client 567
Tracking Site Activity 570
Go Forth 572
Appendix A ■ Installing a Web Server 573
Do You Need a Web Server? 574
Internet Information Services 576
Running Windows SharePoint Services 583
Appendix B ■ Online Resources 593
General Resources 594
Microsoft FrontPage Websites 597
Website Planning Information 597
Web Accessibility Resources 598
Design and Layout Resources 598
Web Development and Applications Resources 599
Resources for Developing Data-Backed Sites 601
Content-Management Resources 602
Website Administration Resources 603
Index 605
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Introduction
In the old days, developers made websites by typing one tag at a time, uphill both
ways, in the snow, against the wind. You’ve heard this story before, haven’t you? Well, we’ve
come a long way, baby, and Microsoft’s FrontPage 2003 now makes the process of developing
robust, production-ready websites almost easy. This is a book by and for professionals work-
ing in any of the fields now affected by the Web, which is to say, the entire global economy.
You can work your way through this book from Chapter 1 to Chapter 24, or you might find it
more productive to jump around, especially if you are already experienced with web devel-
opment or with earlier versions of FrontPage.
Who Needs This BookWhile FrontPage is often thought of as an easy rather than an intuitive and innovative web-
production tool, its close integration with Office and with Microsoft’s web server technologies
and web application frameworks makes it a natural fit for an enterprise that is completely
standardized on Microsoft’s vision. Some people will reach for FrontPage because it is the best
tool for the job, and others will use it because they already own it. FrontPage can be a useful
web-design, development, and management tool for a wide range of people, including but not
limited to the following:
• Project managers
• Writers and editors
• Information architects
• Graphic designers
• Database architects
• Interface designers
• Usability experts
• Developers
• Coders
• Producers
• Artists
• Managers
• Agencies
• Consultancies
• Website owners
• Other professionals
• Students
All of you should get something of value from this book.
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Conventions Used in This BookIn a technical book such as this one, we try to make it as easy as possible for you to pick out
the information you need. (Even our parents don’t read these books from cover to cover!) To
help you find your way through this book as effectively as possible, we’ve incorporated a
number of design elements to call out material that may be of interest to you.
References to the book’s website are singled out with the icon shown in the left margin. We
didn’t use this one too often but we hope you’ll visit the site (http://frontpagesavvy.com).
We think you’ll find it a useful complement to the book and a valuable resource as you get
more experience with FrontPage.
Many of the procedures for accomplishing tasks using FrontPage 2003 are broken down
into numbered steps, and many chapters include Hands On tutorials that enable you to try
out what you’ve learned with a specific project.
S I D E B A R S
Occasionally, interesting bits of information that may not be essential to your understand-
ing of FrontPage 2003 are boxed as stand-alone sidebars, like so. These are usually much
longer than Notes. You can feel free to skip over them if you’re in a hurry to get to the next
paragraph.
Because there are many different ways of working on the Web and you may not need to
make use of every possible feature of FrontPage, feel free to skip around from chapter to
chapter as necessary. To minimize redundancy and pack as much fresh information as possi-
ble into this book, we’ve liberally included cross-references throughout this book to suggest
when you might profit from looking at another chapter.
Tips, comments, and warnings that are not necessarily part of the procedural flow are called
out as Notes.
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How This Book Is OrganizedThis book has five parts comprising 24 chapters, two appendixes, and a color section. Here’s
a quick rundown of what you’ll find inside:
Part I: Planning Your Project and Setting Up FrontPage Part I is all about getting your project
started and your site set up to optimize the development process. Chapter 1 explains what to
do before you even take FrontPage out of the box, including the essentials of website plan-
ning and preparation. Chapter 2 shows you how to get your FrontPage workspace set up for
efficiency and comfort, and how to set up a website for the first time. Chapter 3 breaks down
web pages into their component parts, based on how FrontPage works with HTML files and
other web documents. Chapter 4 explains how to set up your first website, and Chapter 5
introduces you to some FrontPage tools for teamwork and collaboration.
Part II: Building a Web Page Part II is the heart of the matter: how to assemble the essential
elements needed to construct a web page. Chapter 6 explains how to start a page from scratch
(or from an existing page or template). Chapter 7 covers layout with tables or CSS 2.0 (Cas-
cading Style Sheets) to develop cutting-edge standards-compliant designs. Chapter 8 is all
about working with text, including CSS text-style formatting. Chapter 9 shows you how to
add graphics to your pages in FrontPage. Chapter 10 describes how to insert local and exter-
nal hyperlinks onto your pages. Chapter 11 explains how to take a navigation scheme from
the drawing board and implement it in your website. Chapter 12 tells you how to take fin-
ished page designs and turn them into templates to make the production of related pages
that much easier.
Part III: Adding Dynamic Content Part III takes you a step beyond flat, static web pages and
shows you how to add movement and interactivity to your pages. Chapter 13 shows you how
to add animations and multimedia objects to your web pages. Chapter 14 introduces you to
the world of Microsoft-specific ActiveX controls and advanced objects. Chapter 15 explains
the most common platform for interactivity on the Web today: the fill-in-the-blanks form.
Part IV: Developing Web Applications Part IV takes you into the world of dynamic, database-
backed websites, also known as web applications. At this point, you’re developing software
that happens to run over web protocols. Chapter 16 gets you started setting up web applica-
tions with FrontPage. Chapter 17 helps you customize your coding environment. Chapter 18
is a crash course in database development for the Web. Chapter 19 shows you how to use
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FrontPage to build automatic web content components, and Chapter 20 covers a range of
options for incorporating community software into your site.
Part V: Site Administration from Start to Finish Part V is about wrapping up your development
project and handing over a site that doesn’t just look cool but actually works! Chapter 21
explains how to set up administration modules for managing a new site. Chapter 22 helps you
come up with a content-management strategy and solution for your site. Chapter 23 describes
how to verify browser compatibility and accessibility before going live and discusses the issues
involved with launching a site or turning it over to a client. Chapter 24 covers maintaining a
website long after the hoopla of opening day has passed.
Appendixes: Web Resources Two appendixes supplement the core FrontPage information in
the book. Appendix A shows you how to set up a web server on your computer or network,
whether for a testing or staging environment or for production (live) purposes. This appen-
dix also shows you how to install Windows SharePoint Portal or Services to augment Front-
Page’s capabilities.
Appendix B gathers a set of useful FrontPage and website-development resources that are
available on the Web. We’ll update this information and add to it from time to time at the
book’s website (see “Visit Our Website” later in this introduction).
The Color Gallery To help inspire your own design and development efforts, the FrontPage
Website Gallery presents some of the professional, well-designed and eye-catching sites that
were created using FrontPage as the development platform.
Visit Our WebsiteThis book has a website that can be reached at http://frontpagesavvy.com. The site
includes copies of the tutorial and example files; news and developments about FrontPage,
web design, and information architecture; corrections and updates for the book; and a way
for readers to suggest improvements for the next edition.
Tutorials Some of the Hands On tutorials in this book require the use of files supplied on the
book’s website. To try out a tutorial, copy the files from the appropriate chapter to a new
folder on your own computer or network and then follow the steps of the tutorial.
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Website Samples Throughout this book and located on the book’s website are three sample
sites used to illustrate the development of different types of sites. These include
• An heirloom seed company struggling to get its full site online and turn itself into an e-
commerce enterprise
• A community business development agency in upstate New York
• A small marketing company’s intranet
Join the DiscussionThere’s a discussion group for this book as well. You can find the details on the book’s website.
This is also the best place to ask questions of the authors and the other readers of the book.
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Planning Your Project and
Setting up FrontPage
There’s quite a bit of preparation that you need to do before creating a website. You
need to decide who you’re trying to reach with your site, and plan the contents accord-
ingly. You need to understand what the elements of a web page are and how they work
together. You also need to set up FrontPage and your workspace in a way that makes
sense for what you’ll be doing. Finally, you need to compile the content for the site. The
first five chapters of FrontPage 2003 Savvy will guide you through the planning and
preparation stages.
CHAPTER 1 ■ Planning and Preparing for a Web Project
CHAPTER 2 ■ Setting Up Your Workspace
CHAPTER 3 ■ Web Pages Deconstructed
CHAPTER 4 ■ Defining Your Website
CHAPTER 5 ■ Gathering Content and Working with a Team
P A R T I
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Planning and Preparing
for a Web ProjectK A T E J . C H A S E
Many web professionals I know would tell you that the truly difficult job of designing
and launching a website is in the advance planning, as you begin to develop a general con-
cept into a more finite one and then whip this into a workable plan.
If you’ve already spent some time familiarizing yourself with FrontPage 2003’s features,
you know that it includes an abundance of the tools necessary to construct a decent website
that can be as professional and/or as customized as you desire. (And if you’re not familiar with
those features, I’ll talk about some of them in a minute.) You can easily orient a FrontPage-
created website to electronic retail pursuits, to provide members-only content or services for
your clients or subscribers, to offer information about your organization or cause (or kick
this up to a full-blown corporate presence type of site), to set up a work space where team
members can check databases and collaborate on documents related to a project, or to offer
customer support, among a myriad of other possibilities.
Because FrontPage is packed with everything you need to begin your project, many peo-
ple find themselves constructing a site before they even give the whole idea a great deal of
thought. Therein lies a problem.
A good website takes smart advance planning, and a great website usually takes far more
planning. There are questions you need to ask (yourself, if not others), research you need to
perform, and decisions you need to make in advance. Failure to do this advance work invari-
ably shows to the site’s visitors and may very well end up costing you time. For example, you
might not correctly analyze what your users need or you might design a site that requires far
more real-time maintenance than is actually necessary.
In this first chapter, the emphasis is on doing your homework before you begin the actual
work of designing your website. The topics in this chapter include
■ How FrontPage Helps You Prepare
■ Questions You Must Answer
■ Brainstorming Your Concept
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How FrontPage Helps You PrepareCreating a website does not require any special tools. In fact, many of us developed our first
web pages using something as ubiquitous as a text editor such as Windows Notepad. Yet doing
so demands that you have a basic understanding of web page creation along with a fluency
in the fundamental commands in a markup language such as Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML) or Extensive Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML), the basic languages for setting
up web pages.
FrontPage 2003 was designed to allow someone with virtually no experience working with
web markup or HTML and XHTML to be able to develop, publish, and maintain either an Internet-
or intranet-based site. (An intranet is often similar in tools and information dissemination to the
global Internet, but available only though a private network to those with express access.)
FrontPage 2003 does this by providing these services and features, among many:
• Compatibility and integration between this website-creation tool and other key com-
ponents of Microsoft Office, such as Microsoft Word
• Wizards to allow you to create the basis of a full website based on certain standard web-
site types (Customer Support, Project Web, Discussion Web, SharePoint Based Team
Web, Corporate Presence, and so on) that you can then edit and customize to your needs
• Themes (essentially ready-to-go graphic designs) to grant you the ability to create a
consistent aesthetic appearance throughout your website
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to give you the ability to add sophisticated presentation
features such as font, formatting, borders, and colors and to easily make site-wide
changes to these styles
• Collaboration tools to allow you to work on the website with others in your team
• Add-in support for specific third-party products that allow you to add special capabili-
ties to your FrontPage-created site such as an e-commerce component for handling
web sales
• Automated publishing lets you transmit and post your website content quickly and
easily
• Management and reporting options that allow you to analyze, secure, and maintain
your website
All of these features and more combine to give you a single-package solution for creating,
customizing, launching, analyzing, and maintaining your website. Throughout this book, you’ll
learn how to use these features to your best advantage.
Yet with any website, great visuals, strong colors, and good intentions only get you so far
if you fail to do the most fundamental work involved in setting up a site: planning it with care
and attention to detail. FrontPage 2003 alone does much of the work for you, but it can’t
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decide your goals in establishing your website, or make certain you get the correct message
across as you design it, or keep your target audience happy without your careful planning
and active participation.
In this chapter, you’ll get a look at the advance work you need to do before you sit down
with the software, but first, let’s talk for a moment about some of FrontPage’s limitations.
Where FrontPage Doesn’t Always HelpAs a long-time FrontPage user, I think it’s a very solid package for website development and
management, especially for those users with little or no formal training in website creation
and HTML. Yet I feel obligated to tell you that there are some limitations with this package
that you should be aware of before you get to work.
One of the most common complaints is that for best results working with FrontPage, you
have to publish your work to a web server that has been extended or enhanced using some-
thing called FrontPage Server Extensions. This software sets up the conditions necessary for
all FrontPage-supported features, including the easiest publishing method, to work.
While you can still use FrontPage 2003 and create and publish your website even if you’re
not working with a FrontPage-extended server, you may find yourself hampered in the abil-
ity to use certain FrontPage-specific features, including some web components and the web
usage reporting tools. For instance, you can use File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to upload your
web project rather than the automatic Publish tool available under the File menu in Front-
Page. However, if you’re a SecureFTP user, you’ll find that this isn’t supported.
A bigger issue, however, is that many professional designers tend to prefer packages such
as Dreamweaver MX by Macromedia for site designs that are visually complex or that require
the development of sophisticated applications to run from a site’s server. (These applications
are called server-side applications because the server runs the necessary applications rather
than requiring that visitors download and run the applications.) Such folks argue that one of
the tradeoffs for the ease of using FrontPage to build a site is that you’re locked into using just
one of the two server-side scripting languages for developing applications and enhanced func-
tionality that FrontPage supports: Active Server Pages (ASP) and ASP.NET. This immediately
reduces web application options to pretty much only those written in JScript and VBScript.
Don’t take from this, however, that you can’t add server-side applications and strong pro-
fessional features and functionality to your FrontPage-created site. You can. You simply
don’t have these extra tools built directly into FrontPage, so you’ll need to augment what you
can create in FrontPage in order to do that.
This means that if you or someone on your web development team wants to produce or
use applications that are not directly supported by FrontPage, you may be in for a good
amount of tweaking or head banging. For this reason, it’s vital that you establish what you
want to include in your site early on so you can be sure to accomplish what you want using
FrontPage as your main web production and management tool.
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Questions You Must AnswerAs with most worthwhile projects, there are a number of questions that you need to answer
to your satisfaction before you can jump into the process and begin your work.
The questions presented in this section are intended to help you shape the scope of your
web project before you begin to plan its content.
What Are Your Goals for This Site?Having a mission statement for any ambitious project is never a bad idea, but you definitely
need to map out your goals for such a site before you design it. Such goals can have a direct
impact on what you choose to include and how you package it.
If you’re unclear about your objectives and the message you want to convey, your design
and content may reflect this. It can make it far more difficult for you to capture and keep
your core audience.
Your goals need to be realistic, too. For example, if your goal is to open a global website
that generates a million unique hits during its first week, there is almost no chance that this
will happen. Even by hiring professional web marketers to help spread the word, it often
takes between four and six weeks before a new site makes it into one of the major web
search engines such as Google (www.google.com) or Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com).
Let’s look at an example. Consider an heirloom seed company that has decided to open its
first website, complete with an e-commerce component so that it can conduct sales. The
company’s founder, recognizing that she doesn’t have the funds for a massive advertising
campaign to drive people to her new site, begins to assemble a list of short-term goals that
she feels she can meet, including the following:
1. Get the site up and running in 30 calendar days.
2. Add the company’s new URL to all of its print material, including catalogs, order forms,
and advertising.
3. Be prepared for at least a modest (5–10 percent) rise in sales during the first 30 days
that the website is available for orders.
4. Assign someone from the office staff to monitor web-driven e-mail and comments.
Her long-term goals might look like these:
1. Take measures to try to experience a 10 percent growth in website sales during its first
3–6 months.
2. As sales begin to rise, increase the number of products offered on the site until it
approaches 50 percent of the total product list.
3. Develop the site to include a full roster of gardening articles and sowing instructions
and institute a monthly web-based newsletter along with monthly special sales.
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