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When you first open FrontPage, you will see that it has a very familiar feel to it.  This is because it is part of the Microsoft Office Family, a group of Microsoft products that all have a similar design to them. You should be able to see it resemblance to Word quite easily, as the toolbars are the same. 

As always, the best way to learn is to explore and use trial and error...but for those of you who aren't that type of learner, this should give you a good start at using FrontPage. When you are done, you should be fairly proficient at using the program, and should be able to not only make a good looking website, but also publish it and integrate the website you create with other design programs such as Dreamweaver.

The first decision you will have to make in Frontpage is what type of site you want.  By clicking on File->New->Web, you will have a choice of the different types of websites you can make. The two you will use most often are one page and empty webs.  We'll start from scratch and make an empty web. Click 'Okay' to create your site.

You now have a website that contains two folders, which you can see in the frame labeled folder list. Here is where you will manage all of your sites files.  The two labels are 'images' and '_private'. The images folder is where you should place any pictures you may be using.  It is there so that you don't need to worry about your image files being scattered all over the place. The private folder is one where you can keep design notes or any other files that you do not want to be accessible from outside of FrontPage.

The first thing you need to do is create a homepage, the first page a user will view when they type in your web address. If you look to the left of the FrontPage program, you will see a frame titled 'Views'.  This section allows you to quickly views each major section of FrontPage's uses.  The Page view is where you work on the current page.  This section should currently be indented, which shows that you are in that view. 

You have a few choices when it comes to designing your homepage. We will break it down  into three main way:

All three ways give you a different creation experience. In general, HTML will give you the most freedom and control, and Themes will give you the least freedom and control.

Before we go any further, it would be helpful if we went over the different views that are in the 'Views' section. We have already covered Page, so the rest are:

Folders- This section shows all of the files in your site, along with important information about each. It gives you the size of each file in Kilobytes, and it's file type. The most common type you will find are .htm. This view also shows the relative path of each file.  A relative path is the files location in the web, but with out everything that is common to all the other files. For instance, let's say that the full path of your file is: C://Desktop/mywebs/myweb7/index.htm. Because of the fact that every other file in the web is located in myweb7, the relative path of this file is only index.htm. The Folders view also tells you when it was last modified. If you are working on this website with a large group (For this case, 10+ people can be considered large). We will discuss this later.

Reports- This is a web designers heaven...it's got everything and anything you will need to know about your website.  Use these tools throughout the creation process, and you will be able to make smart decisions about your site. 

The Reports section has four main columns of information, each one will help you in a different way.  The first column tells you the name of the information that the following three columns provide. The second column tells you the number of files in your web that fit under the conditions of the first column. The third column gives the cumulative size, in megabytes, of the pages that fall under the condition. The forth column describes the condition.

The first section in reports is 'All Files', which gives the count and size of all of the files in your web.  This is useful if you have a maximum size for your website that you do not want to go over. This is measured in Kilobytes (1000ths of a Megabyte), and you can double click to display every file in your Web, and see it file size and relative path. You can also see its file type and the date it was modified. If you are working in a large group, you will be able to check who it was last modified by as well.

The next section, 'Unlinked Files', shows how many files there are in your Web that can not be reached starting from the Home Page. This does not mean that any file that does not have a direct link from the home page will be listed, it means that any file without a direct OR indirect link will be listed. In this case, an indirect link is a link not off of the homepage, but a link off of a sub-page. It's easier to understand if you just look at it.

'Linked File's are files that CAN be reached from your homepage, either directly or indirectly. Make sure that all files that are linked are ones that you want to be there, and all unlinked files are not important to the site (ie. Blank pages).

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Copyright Thinkquest Team C0110523: Jordan, Maegan, and Chris. Please contact us if you wish to use any part of this website Visit Thinkquest at thinkquest.org

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