If you are a small business owner or an organization that needs a professionally built website, but doesn’t have full-time resources or computer skills to devote to it, FrontPage is the perfect design tool to use to build and host an extremely expert-looking and highly functional site. Microsoft FrontPage is hosting software that is easy to learn, but delivers professional results that a small business or organization needs to look professional on the Internet.
The most obvious feature of FrontPage is the way that you can practically build a website by pointing and clicking, but FrontPage does a lot more than that, because while you are pointing and clicking, it is actually managing your files. That’s right – more than anything, FrontPage is an incredible file manager. First, it uses themes, wizards and templates to establish a consistent filing structure throughout your website. If you click the Folders view, you will see that it has added every page, graphic, and multimedia you have dropped and dragged into assigned files so that you can find and manage them. If you move a page or image to another folder, it will also automatically update links and show them in your files. It will also update your links all at once as you place objects in different files – even if they are outbound to other sites. So more than anything, FrontPage will keep your files organized better than any free site builder from a cheap web hosting company.
FrontPage is also very forgiving when it comes to importing outside data. Some people build a website from scratch, but almost everyone uses some kind of for-public-use graphics and code when they build their site. Because FrontPage itself was originated from General Public License applications, it lets you import almost anything. This includes allowing FTP to download an entire previous site into a FrontPage folder structure – including getting all of the files that aren’t accessible on the live web site. This means that if you have built a site using other software and you want keep it, you won’t lose anything. All you have to do is go to the ‘New’ task pane, find the existing file, and open it. There’s your old website – organized the FrontPage way.
Of course, creating new pages is easy, too. If you are really new to web design you can use the existing FrontPage templates to create web pages. The great thing about these templates is that you can create them as dynamic web templates so that they already contain the HTML that you would otherwise have to code yourself. So while ASP (Active Server Pages) makes coding pages easier, FrontPage web templates have already completed the coding for you. How easy is that? You can create a guestbook or a photo gallery, a user registration form, order forms, and even a search page which lets viewers look for a certain word or subject on your website. You can also create an entire site from a web site template. These templates create all of the necessary pages for you if you are creating a specific kind of website. For example, if you needed to create a project website, FrontPage has a template that creates pages for a discussion group, archived information, and a schedule. Templates are also great to use because they save time when you are working with subdomains or other secondary sites and need a quick design that doesn’t have to be so original looking.
Even if you create your main website from a template, you can still make it look original with customized text and graphics. This is because another great thing about Microsoft FrontPage is that it is just as easy to create themes and formatted text using FrontPage as it is to do it in Microsoft word. You can highlight text to edit it or change the font, size, color, or justification as just as you do with Microsoft Word. Adding graphics and Flash is just as easy. Anything that you can think of can be done with imported graphics simply by dragging, pointing and clicking. You can also create style sheets just like in Microsoft Word from the tools bar. As well, FrontPage accepts most audio and video files.
Adding links is easy as well. You can link to existing pages, new pages, downloads and other sites simply by selecting the text you want to use to create a hyperlink, clicking on the hyperlink button, and following the directions. Links are just as easy to remove and you can go to the Hyperlinks view to see all of your links displayed. FrontPage also manages your links, so it will alert you when there are broken links. This saves a lot of time over managing links manually when you build a site on your own.
FrontPage makes your website look more professional by allowing you to use tables, frames, and even code to create polished-looking layouts. Tables are used by many web designers to create really sharp web pages. You can manipulate the tables in FrontPage not only to display tabular data, but also to define a page by creating a block where you can import images and text from a database. Using frames in a layout for web designs lets you keep uniform elements like banners and navigational links that appear on every page of your website consistent while it allows the content to change. The ‘Coding’ view let’s you change the HTML and add Meta information to your pages. The reason you can do this is because FrontPage will let you change from Design view where you create What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get pages to Code view, where you can edit the HTML code. You can also work with JavaScript and DHTML or ASP and ASP.NET. Tables, frames, and coding are all advanced features of FrontPage, but you don’t need to use them to create an expert site. These features are options that are available for you after you learn the basics of using the templates.
All of this makes for a professional looking website, but FrontPage goes even further to give you a professionally performing website as well. With FrontPage, you can design your site so that it is both dynamic and interactive for your viewers and customers. The first way that FrontPage does this is by allowing you to manage the Navigation structure through the Navigation view. Here, you can look at the structure of your web site and see how all of the pages are linked. As you change and add pages, you can use the Navigational view to make sure that they are in the correct order and that they are all present on the published site.
The next that that FrontPage lets you do is add layers. Layers are portions of your page that are laid over your page but are only viewable when you move the mouse over them. The most common layers are drop downs from a menu bar that let your viewer go to different parts of your website or view alternate information. These are dynamic elements for your site that you can create from the ‘Layers’ task pane.
Creating forms and using them with databases is probably one of the most powerful things that you can do with Microsoft FrontPage. Forms are technically a collection of controls where your viewer or customer can enter information and submit it to your server. Once on your server, it is stored in a database where it can be retrieved on line and used by your customer whenever they need it.
Let’s look at the reason why this is so important. When potential customers come to your website to purchase something, they are doing so blindly. If they have no prior knowledge of you or your site, they are going to judge you by how professional your site is. If they want to be put on your mailing list or want to purchase something on your FrontPage site, they want fill out a professional looking form with their information, be able to change their information, and be able to look at their information every time they come to your site. This gives them the confidence that there is a ‘virtual shopkeeper’ waiting on them every time they come to your website. FrontPage allows you to create this environment by helping you automatically create dynamic forms and attach them to a database on your server. So when you create a form and someone fills it out, you can have a unique customer id assigned to that customer which is associated with all of their information and is stored in a Microsoft Access, MS Access or MySQL database right on your server. FrontPage then lets you create a box where a customer can log in on your site, get a personal greeting, and look up their shopping history or check on their order. This kind of FrontPage hosting is exactly what will make your customers have faith in your site and shop with you instead of someone else.
As you can see, FrontPage hosting can make a world of difference if you are new to hosting and want to put out a website quickly that can also grow with you as you learn more about web development. As your site gets more complicated, FrontPage will save you time and effort when you go to add new pages and add new features. If you don’t have time to learn coding, FrontPage, along with an affordable web hosting Windows package, are definitely the way to go.
