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Microsoft® FrontPage® Managed Webs

Update:As a product, Microsoft FrontPage reached its end of life on June 30th of 2006. It is being replaced by Sharepoint Designer which still requires an extended web server for full support, and Microsoft Expression® which is more standards based. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't plan on releasing any future updates to the server side extensions for Sharepoint Designer on the UNIX/Linux platform.

Microsoft FrontPage is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) graphical based web design tool which lets beginner web site administrators create web sites without knowing any HTML. The tool also came with Microsoft Office and was quite popular for many years and many still use it to update their web sites. Although FrontPage works without a web server that hasn't been extended to support it, some of the built in features are lost. bitServe's web servers support the latest FrontPage Server Extensions that were released. If you plan on using FrontPage to develop your web site, we highly recommend creating a FrontPage Root Web, which will extend your site to add the additional capabilities of FrontPage.

Our Linux hosted customers are running v5.0.2.2623 of the FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions.

The FrontPage configuration files can take up to 30% of the space required by your actual data files depending on the extensions required.

Since most users do not use FrontPage, and the extensions do take up some space, the FrontPage Root Web is not created by default.

You can create the FrontPage Root Web in bitAdmin, our control panel. You should then be able to login to your web site with your FrontPage 98, Frontpage 2000, or FrontPage 2002 client program. We do not provide any support for FrontPage. Please consult the FrontPage documentation or contact Microsoft's Technical Support Staff for assistance.

Once installed, deleting the FrontPage configuration files from your web site directory could cause your web site to stop functioning. Please ensure to disable the FrontPage Root Web in bitAdin rather than simply deleting the configuration files from your web space.

Once your root web has been installed, to maintain your website:

To work on www.yourdomain.com with FrontPage 98:

  1. Go online.
  2. Start Microsoft FrontPage 98
  3. Select File -> Open FrontPage Web (this screen may already popup when you start FrontPage)
  4. Click on the [More Webs...] button.
  5. Type www.yourdomain.com in the "Select a Web server or disk location" field.
  6. Click on the [List Webs] button and wait...
  7. Select the <Root Web> in the list of webs found and click on [OK].
  8. Login by entering the same username and password that was setup for your FTP account and click on [OK].
  9. Refer to your FrontPage Manual for further documentation.

To work on www.yourdomain.com with FrontPage 2000 or 2002:

  1. Go online.
  2. Start Microsoft FrontPage 2000.
  3. Select File -> Open Web (Figure 1).
  4. Click on the "Web Folders" icon on the left (Figure 2).
  5. Type http://www.yourdomain.com in the "Folder name" field and click on [Open] (Figure 3).
  6. Login by entering the same username and password that was setup for your FTP account and click on [OK] (Figure 4).
  7. Click on [OK] one final time (Figure 5).
  8. You should now be in Navigation mode where you can begin editing your web site. (Figure 6).
  9. Refer to your FrontPage Manual for further documentation.

It is always recommended that you maintain your FrontPage managed web site in the above manner. You will always want to connect to your root web, and manage it remotely, in real time. You do not want to edit the content offline on your hard drive and then attempt to publish it to the web server. This will only cause problems related to TCP timeouts, and your content is bound to get out of sync. Also, after you enable your root web, you never want to edit any of the content of the web site using any other method than using your FrontPage client in this manner. You do not want to FTP anything to the web directory. Doing so will cause your FrontPage web to become corrupted.

When setting up forms that email you the results, the from address will be frontpage@yourdomain.com by default and is configurable in bitAdmin.

The only known issue with the FrontPage 2002 extensions is that you can not manage an SSL and a NON-SSL site on the same host name with the FrontPage client.

Refer to your FrontPage manual for further instructions.

We can only provide limited support for FrontPage. If you experience problems:

  1. Follow the above 9 steps, and then select Tools -> Recalculate Hyperlinks
  2. Consult your manual.
  3. Contact Microsoft.s Technical Support Staff for assistance.

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