If you have to go with cheap FrontPage web hosting this may mean that you don’t have a lot of disk space or maybe you have to work with a Linux operating system and FrontPage Extensions. Either way, there are ways to improve your site with FrontPage even if you don’t have a lot to work with hosting wise. Creating a website with FrontPage can be cost more than hosting with other tools. This is because the Windows hosting environment, IIS (Internet Information System) and its compatible components, ASP and ASP.Net, are expensive to run because they are licensed software. The less expensive alternatives that cheap FrontPage web hosting companies have come up with are less disk space per account, or a Linux operating system with FrontPage extensions.
Either way, there are challenges. Less storage space and bandwidth means that you can’t get as creative with your website as you like, and a Linux operating system means that you can’t use FrontPage to its full potential. If you can’t afford any hosting alternatives, however, your web site still doesn’t have to suffer, visually speaking that is. This is because you can use some less expensive tricks like flash to dress up your web site. Support for Flash is included in most cheap FrontPage web hosting packages and is easy to put into any web site.
Macromedia/Adobe Flash is an easy way to improve the look of any site. It works with any browser and is also supported by FrontPage. This means that you can include Flash content anywhere in your site and anyone can enjoy it. Flash content can be almost anything interesting like animation, a recorded presentation, or Flash movies. People react different ways to Flash, but as long as long as you keep it to a minimum and make sure that it contains content that adds to your site, it is the easiest way to instantly make your site stand out.
You can find ready-made Flash content on the Internet that is free to use. If you are just looking at creating some pizzazz for your site, this is the easiest way to go about it. If you want to create something like a demonstration of your product, or put original music to animation to really customize your site, you can get the software from Adobe. However, this starts to defeat the purpose of cheap FrontPage Web Hosting. It is better to get freely distributed, professional-looking Flash components to make your site look better rather than attempting something on your own.
Adding Flash to FrontPage is easy.
- All you have to do is open your file in Design view and click on the page where you want the Flash to go.
- Open the Insert menu and click on ‘Web Component.’
- Then, click the ‘Advanced Controls’ option in the ‘Component Type’ list.
- Click on ‘Flash’ and then click ‘Finish.’
- Open the Flash file you want to insert it and you are done.
It’s really that easy. FrontPage will let you automatically install files that end in the file extensions: .spl, .swf, and .swt. Getting Flash files and putting them into your FrontPage site is the easiest way for you to make it interesting and an easy way to update it on a regular basis. The great thing about Flash is that you can use it one of two ways. You can insert it into a page as part of the page, but you can also use it as an entire page. This requires a bit more work, but the results may be worth it if you want a really eye-catching introduction page.
You can also set play options for your Flash. All you have to do is right-click on the page where the Flash file is located. Then go to the playback area in the properties dialogue box. You can then check the boxes of how you want the file to play. For example, you can have the file play on a continuous loop with no prompt from the user.
Your visitors will have to have the Flash plug-in to play the files that you have installed, but most avid web surfers already have this. If you want, you can always point them to the Macromedia site to get the plug-ins installed for free. All in all, Flash animation is the quickest way to improve cheap FrontPage web hosting without a lot of effort or web development knowhow. If you are new to web development, and are looking at budget web hosting you can have your web site looking great almost instantly. Then, as you learn about server side coding and can afford more disk space, you can update your site the right way and make it run much more professionally.
