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Microsoft FrontPage
FrontPage Template and Tutorial
Microsoft FrontPage is grossly underrated by many people
and often viewed as a beginners tool. It's true, it is very
beginner friendly - but FrontPage is also very powerful and
capable of developing/maintaining complex sites. Taming the
Beast is now over 400 pages, not including sub domains and
FrontPage handles it all very well.
One of the secrets of using FrontPage is making use of the
FrontPage Include function and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
This will dramatically decrease development and maintenance
time. To better demonstrate these features, I've developed a
simple
free FrontPage template kit for download, that also
includes the following tutorial - please remember to read the
terms of use.
Instructions
Simply
download the free FrontPage template and unzip it to a
folder on your hard drive - all the files you need are
included and will be unzipped to their proper folders.
After unzipping:
- Open FrontPage
- Select "Open Web",
- Navigate to the folder and then
- View the index.htm file, which contains part 1 or the
tutorial in relation to FrontPage includes -
- Page2.htm has the CSS tutorial.
A copy of the included tutorials follow:
-----
FrontPage Includes/CSS template tutorial
This template isn't meant to be pretty :). It's just
an example of using FrontPage Includes and CSS as a way of
creating a site that's easy to update and maintain. After
familiarizing yourself with the information I've provided on
these two pages, you can adjust the template to suit your
needs, save it and use it as a basis to build your site.
FrontPage Includes
FrontPage Includes are a cross-browser and search engine
friendly alternative to frames. You create your elements, such
as the top, right, left and bottom navigation bars as separate
files. In your base template page, you then insert those files
with the FrontPage Include function.
To make the navigational elements appear in your base
template as I have here, simply go to "Insert" on the
FrontPage menu bar, select "Include Page" and then select the
appropriate file.
FrontPage Include elements incorporated into your web site
can turn site wide update time from many hours to just a few
minutes!
About this template
This simple FrontPage template makes use of FrontPage
include functions for the header, footer, left and right menu
areas.
- Open up the template in FrontPage and view the index.htm
page in Edit mode.
- Move your mouse over the left menu area.
- The mouse cursor will change to a hand holding a card
- Right mouse button click over the left menu
- Select "Open file:/// etc"
This will then open the page containing the left menu
element, which you can update, save and then return to the
template and view the changes. If you use this template as a
basis for a site, then all the pages saved will also update
with the new menu.
Title and Meta-tags
Don't forget to use separate meta-tags for each page as
this is an important part of
search engine optimization.
The two most important meta tags are description and
keywords; example:
<meta name="description" content="A human readable
statement describing the page up to 200 characters contain
keyword rich text">
<meta name="keywords" content="A,list,of,keywords,and
phrases relevant,to,the,page with,a,comma
between,each,keyword,and phrase,as,demonstrated
here,Should,be,no,more,than,500,characters,in,total">
These two tags can be viewed and edited by switching into
HTML view mode in FrontPage - they are towards the top of the
source code.
The title tag can be easily adjusted in FrontPage while in
page edit mode by right mouse clicking on the page and
selecting "Page Properties".
Let's move on to learning about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
as a means of controlling the text formatting throughout your
site with a single file.
Continued on Next Page >>
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