Welcome to the FrontPage section of the Internet Hotline Web Hosting Support Manual where you will find information about all aspects of using the Microsoft® FrontPage™ program. 

• The subject covered in this section are as follows: 
• Introduction 
• Microsoft FrontPage Extensions 
• Naming Your Home Page 
• Publishing A Web Updating A Web 
• Updating A Web Live On The Server 
• Troubleshooting Removing Microsoft FrontPage Extensions 
• Further Reading And Related Links

INTRODUCTION

Microsoft FrontPage is a web site design and publishing application which allows you to design your web pages using a user friendly graphical interface. It also controls the uploading of your site to the Internet - there is no need to use a separate FTP program (in fact using FTP may cause corruption to the preinstalled FrontPage system files!). 

FrontPage is particularly well suited to beginners, and allows the creation of a quality web site quickly and easily, without the need for HTML coding or any other specialised knowledge. 

Installing FrontPage Extensions for your site does not install the Microsoft FrontPage application on your local computer. FrontPage is a separate software application which you will need to purchase and install on your computer if you wish to use it. 

Microsoft FrontPage should not be used in combination with certain utilities in the Control Panel. Once FrontPage Extensions have been enabled for your account, you should use FrontPage to perform the following functions rather than using the Control Panel options:

Mime Types 

Web Protect (Password Protecting Folders)

More advanced users should also be aware that custom .htaccess files should not be used with a FrontPage published site. 

MICROSOFT FRONTPAGE EXTENSIONS

In order to publish FrontPage created pages on your site, you will need the FrontPage Extensions to be installed for your account. 

In actual fact, it is possible to use FrontPage without the FrontPage Extensions being installed, but you won't be able to benefit from many of the built in features. For example, FrontPage generated forms will not work without the Extensions. If, for some reason, you should decide to use FrontPage without the Extensions, you will still be able to Publish your Web from within FrontPage, but instead of Publishing in the normal way you will need to Publish to the address ftp://www.yourdomain.com/public_html/ 

NAMING YOUR HOME PAGE

The home page of your site (sometimes called the default or index page) is the page you wish to have displayed by default when visitors just type in your domain name, without specifying the name of a particular page. 

We recommend naming your home page index.htm as it will then automatically overwrite the temporary "Welcome to the future home of..." placeholder page when you first Publish your Web. You may instead call it index.html if you prefer, or any of the valid home page names which are listed in our Getting Started section. If you choose a name other than index.htm or index.html for your home page, then you may need to manually delete the pre-installed index.htm file from the public_html folder so that the correct home page is displayed. The index.htm file can be manually deleted using either the online File Manager or an FTP program. 

Please be aware that all filenames on our servers are case sensitive and all valid home page names consist entirely of lower case letters. For example, calling your home page Index.htm (with an upper case I) instead of index.htm may cause problems, as this is not a valid home page name. The server will attempt to correct for incorrectly named home pages (such as Index.htm) by automatically renaming the file as index.html when you publish your Web, but it is best not to rely on this and to name your home page correctly in the first place.

PUBLISHING A WEB

Once you have designed and tested your site using the FrontPage application on your local computer, you will want to upload the site (or "web") to your Internet Hotline, IHOT WebHosting account, so that it can be viewed on the Internet. 

This is called "publishing" your "web" in the FrontPage parlance, and involves the following steps:

1. In FrontPage, open the "web" which you wish to upload (or "publish"). 
2. Select File->Publish Web... 
3. Enter http://www.yourdomain.com/ in the box labelled "Specify the location to publish your web to". Be sure not to specify the public_html or www directory to FrontPage when publishing. FrontPage will find the correct location for your files automatically using just the domain name for your site. Please note that you won't be able to publish your site until your domain name registration or transfer is fully completed. 
4. Click the Publish button. 
5. You will be prompted for your account User Name and FrontPage Password. 
6. FrontPage will begin uploading your site.

The above steps should also be followed whenever you need to re-publish your local "web" to the server after making any changes. When you re-publish, FrontPage will automatically compare your local "web" with the live "web" on the server and will only update any new or changed pages (and remove any deleted pages).

A note on deleting files:

During the process of publishing the site, you may be prompted "Do you want to remove this file?". Please only click "yes" if you are sure that the file concerned is not one of the system created files and folders which are essential for the smooth running of your account. If you do not remember creating the file yourself, it is probably better to play safe and not delete it. To learn more about these Pre-installed Files, please refer to the FTP section of the Online Manual. 

An exception is the index.htm file in the public_html folder. This file can be (and should be) safely overwritten.

A note on Passwords:

When FrontPage Extensions were first installed for your account, your FrontPage password will have been set to be the same as your main account password. If you later change your account password using the Control Panel Password Option, your FrontPage password will be changed automatically at the same time. In other words, your FrontPage password will always be the same as the main account password you use when logging in to your Control Panel (unless you change it manually from within the FrontPage application, which we don't recommend).

UPDATING A WEB

After you have published your "web" to your Internet Hotline, IHOT WebHosting account, you will almost certainly want to modify it at some time in the future. We recommend that you always do this in two steps. First, update the copy of your "web" held on your local computer. Then re-publish this local "web" to the server using the normal procedure for publishing a "web". 

Doing it this way ensures that your local "web" always remains up to date and so can act as a local backup of your site. It also avoids the need to remain on-line whilst experimenting with changes to your "web".

Modifying a local "web" involves the following steps: 

1. In FrontPage, select File->Open Web... 
2. By selecting from the Look in: drop-down box, you can choose to open a previously created "web" on your local computer. Click the Open button to continue. 
3. Make whatever changes are required to your "web". 
4. Click on File->Save to save your changes. 

UPDATING A WEB LIVE ON THE SERVER

An alternative to updating your "web" locally is to update your "web" live on the server. 

We don't recommend this method, as the local copy of your "web" on your local computer will not be updated. This means that you won't have an up to date backup of your site. Also, when you next re-publish in the normal way (from your local "web" to the server), any changes will be overwritten and lost. 

If used at all, this method is best used only as a quick way to make small changes. However, if you do find that you have made a lot of changes live on the server, you may find it useful to publish "in reverse", from the server back to your local computer, in order to create an up to date local copy of your site. 

Modifying a "web" live on the server involves the following steps:

1. In FrontPage, select File->Open Web...  
2. By selecting from the Web Folders directory in the Look in: drop-down box, you can choose to open a "web" which has already been uploaded to your Internet Hotline, IHOT WebHosting account. Or, as an alternative to using the drop-down box, you can instead type http://www.yourdomain.com/ directly into the Folder name: field. Click the Open button to continue.  
3. You may be prompted for your User Name and FrontPage Password.
4. Make whatever changes are required to your "web".
5. Click on File->Save to save your changes.
6. After making changes it may be necessary to have FrontPage recalculate the internal links for your site. Please consult the FrontPage built in help documents for details of when this will be necessary.

TROUBLESHOOTING

A:) If your home page has not updated:

When your account was first set up, a place-holding home page was created called index.htm. This page contains a message welcoming you to your Internet Hotline, IHOT WebHosting account.

As explained above, we recommend that you also name your true home page index.htm, but you may instead use any of the valid home page names listed in our Getting Started section. If you give the home page for your Web a name other than index.htm then the original index.htm page may not get automatically deleted when you publish your Web. To allow your home page to be recognized as the default page you may then need to delete the original index.htm file by hand, using either the online File Manager or an FTP program. 

B) See the Naming Your Home Page section above for more on this. 

This is often a sign that the FrontPage Extensions have become corrupted. It is very easy to corrupt the FrontPage Extensions by mistake. For this reason, we recommend that you avoid using FTP or the online File Manager unless absolutely necessary when maintaining a site published through FrontPage. 

C) If a FrontPage session is interrupted before completion, this error sometimes occurs the next time you try to connect. It can be corrected by deleting the file service.lck which can be found in the folder /public_html/_vti_pvt/. This file may be deleted either by using the online File Manager or by using an FTP program

REMOVING MICROSOFT FRONTPAGE EXTENSIONS

If you decide that you no longer wish to use FrontPage to maintain your web site, you can uninstall them from your control panel. This will release a little disk space and make your account folder less cluttered with unnecessary files and folders.

FURTHER READING AND RELATED LINKS

There are many good books and online resources which explain how to use the Microsoft FrontPage application. A good starting point is Microsoft's own Product Support Page for Microsoft FrontPage users.