With the new dynamic web page templates that come with FrontPage 2003 web hosting, there isn’t a need to worry about checking to see if new pages that you are adding match the old ones. This used to be a challenge as people would add pages to their existing site. This is because when you first develop your web site, you probably have the layout all figured out. You have every page planned and the basic templates from FrontPage are a help in the fact that they give you a starting point. After that, you can put anything on the page that you wanted. As long as you follow the original plan, all of your pages are fine.
However, now that you have your web site all planned out and published, what do you do if you want to go back and add pages? This generally happens when your site takes on a new direction somewhere down the road, or as your web site expands. The challenge faced with adding pages to your site in FrontPage 2002 was that while the design template would still put everything in the same position, you still had to go back and recreate every new page by putting all the same elements from the other pages on it individually. If you had a large or complicated site this could be a real mess. Also, if you had multiple people working on your site, this could create some real problems.
This is why Microsoft introduced dynamic web templates for FrontPage 2003. With dynamic web templates, a page of your website with all the information that doesn’t change on every page is saved. This is so that you don’t’ have to go through recreating the same basic information every time you go to add a page. This is how it works. FrontPage 2003 lets you create a template with all of the information on your pages that don’t change. So if you have a banner, a logo, a copyright notice, and site-navigation components that appear on every page, you can lock these components into the template and change anything else on the page that you want to, including text and graphics.
This is especially helpful when you are adding new pages, especially if someone else is helping you. This is because they can’t change the template, no matter what content they add to any page. This is also helpful if you change the template itself. If you want to update the look of all your pages with a change to something like the logo and your logo is on the dynamic template, the change will automatically appear on all of your pages. Similarly, if you want to make all of the pages look uniform, you can update them all by applying the design template to the entire website. This way, you not only save time on updating pages, you also can assign a new page to anyone to create and you know that the logo, banner and site navigation tools will all remain intact.
To create a dynamic web template, create a new page with whatever basic template you normally use. Do a ‘Save As” and choose ‘Dynamic Web Template’ from the drop down menu. Put in a file name and save it. Design this page just as you would any other page, adding only the elements that you wish to appear on every page of your website. The best way to do this is by using tables. By using tables, you will be able to create consistent content in certain cells and define the others as being editable regions.
The reason why you have to define editable regions on your template is because this is place where you will enter text on your pages, but also because this is how you give each page its own title. This is because when you make each page a template, there has to be a way to define each page as being different. You do this by adding a title to the editable area on each page. To do this, select the area on the template where the unique content should go on each page, usually a table cell or cells. Choose Format, then Web Template, and then Manage Editable Regions. Give the editable region a new name in the Editable Regions Dialogue box. Repeat this for every new page that you create.
Now the template is ready for use. In order to create new pages, go to Create New Page and choose Format. Click Attach Dynamic Web Template. Select the desired dynamic web template and click OK. You have a new page as soon as you title the editable text area.
FrontPage 2003 web hosting does more than simplify creating new pages. With dynamic web page templates, you can add to or redesign your whole site very quickly and also make fewer mistakes as you update.
