Webhosting & eCommerce

How to Setup Microsoft Frontpage

  • Introduction to Microsoft Frontpage
  • Steps to Enable Microsoft FrontPage with Your Domain
  • What Happens in Your Account when you Enable FrontPage
  • Using Microsoft FrontPage
  • Publishing with FrontPage
  • Frontpage troubleshooting


    Introduction to Microsoft Frontpage

    Microsoft FrontPage is a sophisticated Web authoring tool, which includes a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web page editor, giving you the ability to create impressive web pages without needing to know the intricacies of the HTML formatting language. FrontPage can edit existing web pages or create new ones from scratch. It also contains a 'wizard' utility which can create an entire site for you based on your answers to plain English questions.

    We support virtually all of the Microsoft Frontpage "server extensions", including all of the web management and publishing capabilities, and all of the standard Microsoft "WebBots" which can be used to add additional functionality to your web site.

    We do not support ASP pages, ODBC and SQL database connections. This requires an NT server and our servers are Unix based.

    Steps to Enable Microsoft FrontPage with Your Domain

    Before you can use FrontPage with your Server101 account, you must activate the FrontPage extensions for your account. To do so, follow these simple steps. To report any problems enabling Microsoft FrontPage for your account, please contact Server101 Technical Support at support@server101.com .

    Steps to enable Microsoft FrontPage with your virtual server:

      1. Login to your "member services" section.
      2. Choose Configure FrontPage Extensions from the main menu.
      3. On the next screen, click the Submit button at the bottom of the page to submit your changes. You will see a confirmation screen telling you that the changes have been made, and that Microsoft Frontpage has been enabled for use with your Domain name. That's all there is to it!
    What Happens in Your Account when you Enable FrontPage

    When you enable Microsoft Frontpage extensions for your Domain name, several directories and new files are created in your directory . Please do not edit, delete, move, or rename any of these files or directories. Doing so will probably cause FrontPage to break and not work correctly with your account. Any directory beginning with "_vti" contains important files which are needed to utilize Microsoft Frontpage with your account.

    Using Microsoft FrontPage

    Using Microsoft FrontPage with Server101 is the same as when you created the original web site content on your local machine through the Personal Web Server. Once you have published your web, when you start up FrontPage, you have the ability to open the version of the web on your local machine, or the remote version on our server. If you select to open the version on our server, you can open, edit, and save files directly to our server. Making changes directly to the files on does have advantages as far as ease and speed, but we generally recommend that you manage your site by making changes locally and uploading your changes. The advantage of this is that you will always have a local copy of your files, and you will not need to have a continuous connection to the Internet while modifying your site.

    Publishing with FrontPage

    Publishing your web site with FrontPage Explorer is fairly easy. Before you start, make sure that you have configured your account to be FrontPage enabled, and that your domain name is currently active. can proceed by following these steps:

    1. Open FrontPage Explorer.
    2. Open the FrontPage web located on your local machine that you intend to publish to your domain.
    3. Select "Publish FrontPage Web..." from the file menu.
    4. At this point you will be presented with a dialog box.
      • If you are using FrontPage 97:
        1. You will see two input fields. In the first one labeled "Destination Web Server or File location" enter your domain name such as membername.server101.com (all lower-case)
        2. Leave the second field as the default <Root Web> or leave it blank.
        3. Publish your web by clicking OK.
      • If you are using Frontpage 98:
        1. You should see one input field labeled as the location to publish your FrontPage web. If you do not see this, click on "More Webs..."
        2. Insert your domain name such as membername.server101.com (all lower-case)
        3. Click the OK button, and the next OK button to initiate publishing.
    5. FrontPage will start publishing, and you will be prompted for a username and password. Enter your Server101 username and password and click OK.
    That should be it. At this point FrontPage publishes your site to your Server101 account online. If you are not publishing for the first time, or you are publishing a sub web, the steps are essentially the same. If you have problems with this procedure, (such as FrontPage invoking the Web Publishing Wizard instead of publishing) take a look at trouble shooting section below.

    Frontpage Troubleshooting

    The advantage of using FrontPage for creating and publishing your site is the ease with which such tasks can be done. However, as with any program, there are commonly made mistakes to watch out for. Here are some simple tips that can help you prevent the most common snags when using Microsoft FrontPage.

    • Make sure that you have an Internet connection when you attempt to publish your site. If you do not have an Internet connection established, FrontPage will invoke the Microsoft Publishing Wizard or possibly report other errors. If this happens, cancel the publishing procedure, establish an Internet connection, and try again.
    • Do not attempt to use the Microsoft Publishing Wizard to publish your site. It is surprisingly difficult to use, and can potentially cause problems with your FrontPage web. Instead, publish through the FrontPage Explorer which is easier to use in comparison.
    • Do not use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to publish your site. FrontPage expects that webs will be published through the FrontPage Explorer. If you use FTP, components of your web (webbots in particular) may not function properly.
    • When publishing your pages, list your domain in lower-case letters such as: membername.server101.com   Normally domain names are not case-sensitive, but using upper-case letters when publishing may not work properly.
    • If you have installed AOL (American OnLine) software after installing FrontPage, FrontPage may not function properly, automatically invoking the Microsoft Publishing Wizard when you attempt to publish, or possibly reporting other errors. If you experience this, you will need to reinstall the FrontPage Personal Web Server.
    • If your web browser uses proxy settings in order to get out on the web then you will need to enter those setting in Frontpage configuration as well. To do so, go to Tools=>Options=>Proxies and enter the http proxy in the following format: proxyatyourISP.com:port_Number