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How To Create A Website With FrontPage
[Before You Begin:]
Just like an essay or a term paper, you need to have an outline of the content of your website. Later you'll use the main headings of your outline as your web page's main navigational links. After years of developing websites for people, I've noticed that the number one thing that holds up a project is not having all the written content for the website. Content is the number one reason people visit websites, yet people put more time and effort trying to get the latest, best looking design. Write and gather your content first, before you start trying to use FrontPage to design your website. Also collect all (or most) of the raw images that you will need for the web page. If you do this first, the development of your web page project will be much easier.
[Designing the Layout:]
Do not have a “design as you go” mentality toward website development because you will end up wasting time. If you are not going to use one of FrontPage's templates You should at least make a quick sketch of the layout of your web page on paper. Stay away from bright, loud background colors. Any design aspect such as colors, pictures, and graphics should enhance the content, not distract the users.
Related Links
web design resources
[Setting up a FrontPage Website:]
Now that you have an outline of the content for your project, and now that you have an idea of what you want your website to look like, it is time to begin developing your page in Microsoft FrontPage. It is important that you setup your FrontPage project properly. From the panel on the right side of the program, click “empty web” which is listed under the heading “New”. A window called “Website Templates” will pop up. Click the “Empty Web” Icon. On the left side from the “views” panel click the “folder” icon. You should see two folders: “images”, and “private”. All images for the web should be imported to the “image” folder. FrontPage automatically saves the project in the “My Webs” folder of “My Documents”. You can see the path from the folder view. Go to that folder in “My Documents” and rename the newly created “myweb” folder. It’s important that you save the whole renamed folder to your disk/CD after you finish working on your project. Also when you need to open the project, you must use “open web” or the project will not display properly or save properly.
See demonstration
setup: starting a FrontPage project
setup: learning where Frontpage saves your website
[Creating Web Pages:]
From the “views” panel choose “navigational”. Right click on the page icon (that has the little house). This is the index page. Select > New > Page. Rename the pages (repeat as many times as necessary). This is why it was important for you to have an outline. Once you've have created all the pages that you will need for your project, double click on the index page and develop your page based on the design that you created ealier. Insert a table for organization and structure. If you will be using FrontPage’s navigation structure, then from the main menu select: insert > web component > link bar > bar based on navigational structure. If you are using your own buttons then you can just insert the picture (remember that all pictures should be imported to the “images” folder) then insert the hyperlink. Save your work periodically. We recommend that you store your web project on a CD-R.
See demonstration
creating web pages