Extra Reading and Resources

• Publishing Your Site on the Internet with Microsoft FrontPage -

  • Some people prefer using FTP for publishing as it gives them full control of the publishing process. While FrontPage obviously does support this option, it is important to point out that publishing with FrontPage takes away many of the hassles and makes the process of remembering which files you changed a painless one.

  • Note: Publishing through the FrontPage interface and FrontPage Server Extensions is based on the HTTP protocol and, as a result, works through firewalls and other connections that do not normally allow for FTP connections because of security risks.

  • Be careful not to lose your login and password information for your Web site. Keep them in a safe and secure place.

  • One of the most powerful features of FrontPage Server Extensions is the ability to quickly publish your Web site without the hassle of remembering which files were updated and having to select each one individually for transfer. If you aren't using a Web server with FrontPage Extensions installed, consider doing so for this simple time saver alone.

  • If your Web site makes use of FrontPage Server Extensions, you'll need to publish through the Publish option. Publishing through the FTP option will not transfer all of the information needed and will result in an incomplete transfer.

  • The Options button in the Publish Web dialog box gives you the ability to either publish only the pages changed since the last publication (default) or to publish all pages, overwriting possible changes on the server side. It also gives you the ability to help maintain security while publishing via SSL.

• FTP - File Transfer Protocol

  • FTP stands for the File Transfer Protocol, a format for sending files over the Internet. There are many FTP programs available that enable you to use the FTP format to do just that. Some people enjoy publishing a FrontPage Web site through a more traditional FTP program. This includes either the FTP program built into Internet Explorer or the many FTP programs available for use throughout the net.  FTP is now a standard publishing option for MS FrontPage 2003.

  • A disk-based Web requires no special communication with the Web server and FrontPage stores the information for the site on your hard drive in the same hierarchy it will on the final server. As a result, publishing by FTP simply requires opening a connection to the Web server through the FTP program and transferring the Web files from your computer to the Web server.

  • When you use FrontPage to publish your site, FrontPage keeps track of which files have been changed and only publishes those files to save time. This is an especially valuable feature if your site contains a lot of content that takes a long time to transfer. If you publish via FTP, you are responsible for tracking that information.

The following article was copied from the FrontPage Web Site:

•  Making Your Web Site More Interactive with Microsoft FrontPage

  • Overview

  • What Will a More Interactive Web Do for My Business?

  • Discussion Groups

  • Interactive Calendars

  • Online Video and Streaming Media

  • Pop-ups Menus

  • Banner Ads and Banner Ad Managers

  • Image Swap

  • Summary

  • More Information

  • Microsoft Resources

• Overview

  • Interactive Web pages add not only interest and important functionality to any small business online presence, but also can help grow business. Web authors can use Microsoft FrontPage® 2002 to add a wide variety of interactive elements such as discussion groups, interactive calendars, online video, pop-up menus, banner ads, and image swapping. These elements will help your Web site acquire and keep online customers who want to be kept up to date on your latest product offers and services.

  •  This article assumes that the reader has at least Advanced Beginner to Intermediate skills using FrontPage in a Microsoft Windows®-based PC environment and understands how to author a basic Web site.

• What Will a More Interactive Web Do for My Business?

  • Making your Web site more interactive is good for business because it can stimulate customer interest while providing a number of tools to improve your customer experience and your bottom line. In addition, using the powerful authoring features of FrontPage 2002 to quickly develop more interactive Web pages, offers a wide variety of opportunities in terms of improving- communication within your organization, customer services, sales tools, and direct sales via e-commerce technology thus improving your Web site Return On Investment (ROI). Below are six ways to make your Web more interactive using FrontPage 2002, how they will help you grow your business online, and information to get started using them.

• Discussion Groups

  • A discussion group makes a Web site highly interactive because it allows site visitors to discuss topics online about articles or comments that have been posted to the site, and gives them the opportunity to reply, as well as post new articles or comments. Visitors can also search to find articles and discussion threads of interest. Discussion groups in general provide a forum for your site's visitors to communicate with each other. These forums can be used to harvest feedback from your customers or gauge interest in new products or services.

  •  While discussion groups are usually open to everyone visiting the Web site, with FrontPage 2002 it is also possible to set up discussion groups that employ security measures to help limit access to certain users who must register and log in to the discussion on the Web site. These discussion groups, which employ security measures to help protect privacy, can be used to help your employees, partners, and suppliers collaborate on projects, brainstorm ideas, refine documents, just to name a few.

  •  Using Microsoft SharePoint™ Team Services (a technology included with FrontPage 2002), it is possible to create special types of discussion groups called "Web document discussions" where users, working together on the same information, can discuss it by attaching comments directly to team Web pages and documents. This type of discussion group is available only on Webs hosted by Web servers running SharePoint Team Services. To find out more about SharePoint Team Services, see Microsoft Resources at the end of this article.

• Setting Up a Discussion Group in FrontPage 2002

  • A discussion group makes a Web site highly interactive because it allows site visitors to discuss topics online about articles or comments that have been posted to the site, and gives them the opportunity to reply, as well as post new articles or comments. Visitors can also search to find articles and discussion threads of interest. Discussion groups in general provide a forum for your site's visitors to communicate with each other. These forums can be used to harvest feedback from your customers or gauge interest in new products or services.

  • While discussion groups are usually open to everyone visiting the Web site, with FrontPage 2002 it is also possible to set up discussion groups, which employ security measures to help limit access to certain users who must register and log in to the discussion on the Web site. These private, It only takes a few quick steps to setup a full featured FrontPage-based discussion group on your Web site. Just open your FrontPage-based Web in FrontPage 2002 and follow these steps:

    From the File menu point to New, and then click Page or Web.

    In the New Page or Web task pane, under New from template, click Web Site Templates and select Add to current Web.

    Select the Discussion Web Wizard then follow the directions on your screen to create a discussion group.

• Interactive Calendars

  • Interactive calendars on Web pages display information similar to what you would expect to find on any calendar with the additional ability to change their display or take site visitors to related information based on user actions such as clicking on a particular day in a month.

  • These interactive calendars can fulfill many uses based on how they function in your Web site. For example, a calendar could be used to browse local activities and events as well as allow users to post their own activities and events or report any incorrect or improper messages. Interactive calendars can also be used to provide a quick way for users to find and select a date on a Web page event registration form.

  • Interactive calendars on your business Web site can effectively provide your sales personnel in the field, suppliers, or customers with important schedule, event, or time critical promotion information.

• Implementing Interactive Calendars Using FrontPage 2002

  • There are a number of ways to implement interactive calendars using FrontPage 2002. One of these is to create a SharePoint Team Services-based interactive list using the Events list template. A SharePoint Team Services-based interactive list is a framework that you design to enable site visitors to store and view information in your Web site. For example, you could create an online sign-up sheet for an event, or you could create a list that allows you to add content to your Web site remotely, via a Web browser. An events list is designed to store information such as dates and location and uses an interactive calendar to display that information. And if site visitors have a SharePoint Team Services-compatible calendar, such as Microsoft Outlook 2002 installed, they can export items from the events list to their calendar. To find out more about SharePoint Team Services, see Microsoft Resources at the end of this article.

  • Another way to implement an interactive calendar is to use the Dynamic HTML (DHTML) calendar behavior and scripting in your FrontPage-based Web site. DHTML is a Microsoft enhancement to HTML version 4.0 that enables you to create visual effects or improve the layout of a Web page. The calendar behavior is used to provide a quick and easy method for users to find and select a date. It can be used in any situation where date input is required, such as on a Web page form, in utilities, or in applications.  To find out how, go to: http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/samples/internet/behaviors/library/calendar/default.asp

• Online Video and Streaming Media

  • Online video can make your Web site more interactive by allowing users to run video clips or streaming videos on the site.

  • Video clips are made by capturing video segments with a computer configured with the appropriate hardware and software. These segments are then stored in files that can be used on Web sites similarly to the way graphic and text files are. Video clips can be very large files, even very short, small format clips, and there can be problems using them as your Web visitor must download the entire video clip to their browser, before it can be viewed. The time involved to do this can result in a negative user experience especially if they are on a low bandwidth Internet connection.

  • However, with streaming video (and other streaming media files), downloading is more transparent because the files are fed to the user in a continuous stream as they view the media. Streaming video can also be enhanced by including other streaming media such as slides, graphics, animation and live data.

  • In addition to making your Web site more attractive, using interactive video can also be used to create engaging media rich presentations to deliver messages to your customers, investors, or partners. Businesses can use online video and streaming media as a cost-effective means to present business plans, visions, objectives, products, services, etc, and hopefully in doing so increase their bottom line.

• The Microsoft Windows Media Player Add-in for FrontPage

  • You can use FrontPage 2002 to easily add video clips to one of your Web pages by going to the Insert menu, selecting Photo and then Video. Or alternatively, you can use The Microsoft Windows Media™ Player Add-in for FrontPage.

  • This add-in enables new capabilities for FrontPage users including the ability to: quickly embed Windows Media into FrontPage-based Web pages; control the look and feel of the media playback experience; and publish to a Web or streaming server automatically. All this functionality is available from within the add-in's wizard without having to write any script.

  • To download The Windows Media Player Add-in for FrontPage, go to the FrontPage Add-in Center URL listed below, click on the download, then the link to save the add-in to your computer. The download is available at:

  • http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/downloads/addin/searchdetail.asp?aid=50

  • Double click on the file WMPFPAddin.exe to begin the installation. The installation wizard will walk you through setup of the add-in components. Then, to use the add-in, open a Web page in FrontPage. To embed the Windows Media Player in a FrontPage-based Web page, position the cursor in the page where you want the video to appear, and from the Insert menu, select Windows Media Player.

  •  With the Windows Media Player Add-In Wizard open you can:

    Select Audio or Video content, and use the wizard to determine what order you want multiple media files to play in.

    Select the controls you wish to appear in the Web page, enabling the user to start and stop the playback of the media.

    Select the playback options, such as the number of times you wish the media file to play, whether the file should start automatically etc.

  • When you finish, the Add-In does the rest behind the scenes. You can then preview the embedded Windows Media content in your FrontPage-based Web site.

• Pop-up Menus

  • A pop-up menu is a navigational element that when clicked on displays an additional menu box listing the contents of the section appearing immediately next to the navigational item you selected (typically using a nice effect such as a scroll-down). The pop-up menu can have additional visual effects like when a user moves the mouse over one of the article titles in the menu, the title changes color. Clicking the title sends you to a destination Web page. The menu can remain visible until you click somewhere else on the page.

  • Pop-up menus can be key navigational elements to effectively provide Web site-wide navigation. For example, pop-up menus used to display a list of articles for each section of a site and can help your Web visitors by saving them time and effort in their search for useful information. Pop-up menus provide an elegant way to simplify the navigation of complex or data-heavy sites and they avoid the annoyance of using the back button repeatedly or scrolling to find information. Finally, your Web site will benefit from the reduction in server hits that comes with more efficient use of site navigation. All these benefits will improve your customer online experience.

• Getting Started with Pop-up Menus

  • With FrontPage 2002, there are several ways to add pop-up menus to your Web site. One is to use a pop-menu or DHTML menu Add-in for FrontPage which can be found in the Formatting section of the FrontPage Add-in Center at:  http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/downloads/addin/searchresults.asp?idcat=10&x=13&y=10

  • Alternatively, you can learn how to build a pop-up menu from scratch in FrontPage by going to the article (with demo and sample code), Build a Pop-up Menu Using Dynamic HTML and JavaScript at: http://www.microsoftfrontpage.com/content/ARTICLES/articles.htm

• Banner Ads and Banner Ad Managers

  • Another method of adding interactivity to your Web site is by adding banner ads, in which ad pictures can contain one or more hyperlinks to your products and services or to 3rd party advertising to generate additional revenue streams. Banner ads can also be configured to act as rotating billboards on a Web page. Rotating banner ads present products, services and businesses in a visually more interesting and dynamic way.

  • Banner ad managers can be used to organize and display advertisements for several different products, services, or businesses within the same banner ad Web page real estate.

• The FrontPage Banner Ad Manager and bCentral Banner Network

  • The Banner Ad Manager in FrontPage 2002, allows you to quickly organize and display banner ads using a timed sequence of pictures complete with transition effects between pictures. You can set the size of the banner ad, the transition effect to display between pictures, duration that pictures are displayed, order of the ads, and the default hyperlink for each ad.

  • To use the Banner Ad Manager in FrontPage 2002, open a Web page in the program and from the Insert menu, select Dynamic Effects and then Banner Ad Manager.

  • The best way to select a transition effect in the Banner Ad Manager is to create a banner ad and preview it, trying various effects until one matches your needs. Then preview the banner ad by clicking the Preview tab or click Preview in Browser on the File menu.

  • You can also attract new customers with no cost advertising by joining the Web's largest banner network, the Microsoft bCentral™ Banner Network, and advertise online. The bCentral Banner Network is a cooperative model in that for every 2 ads you display on your site, you earn a credit toward displaying your banner on another member's site. The amount of free advertising you receive is directly proportional to the amount you give others.

  • To access the Banner Network from within FrontPage 2002, select the Insert menu, click Web Component, then bCentral Components, and then in the right pane, double-click bCentral Banner Ad. Or learn more about the Banner Network by visiting the bCentral Web site at: http://adnetwork.bcentral.com/

• Image Swap

  • Related to rotating banner ad displays, image swapping adds interest by making your Web site more dynamic. Image swapping involves replacing images with other images in a variety ways under a variety of circumstances. Image swapping can be used to guide users to areas of interest by highlighting an element on a page when a user's cursor movement triggers a graphic element to be swapped with another thus creating an eye-catching change. Image swapping also provides ways to create simple animations and other dynamic effects without negatively affecting how quickly a particular Web page takes to be loaded in your site visitor's browser. Image swapping makes your pages come alive, enhancing your Web site visitor's online experience, and gives your site a longer lasting impact.

• Scripting Image Swapping in FrontPage 2002

  •  With FrontPage 2002, you can create a wide range of image swap effects using DHTML and scripting techniques.

  • To use DHTML to swap an image in FrontPage, open a Web page in Page view in the Normal pane and select an image you want to swap with another. Then from the Format menu, click Dynamic HTML Effects. This displays the DHTML Effects toolbar. On the DHTML Effects toolbar do the following:

  • In the On box, click the down arrow, and then select the event that will trigger the swap animation, in this case Mouse Over.

  • In the Apply box, click the down arrow, and then select the type of animation effect you want to occur, in this case Swap Picture.

  • In the Choose Settings box, click the down arrow, and then choose the settings for the effect: Choose picture. Now select the picture to swap when the event you selected in step 1 occurs.

  • To use scripting to swap images in FrontPage, start with a search on scripting resources on your favorite Internet search Web site. It should provide you with all the information and complete scripts to use you could ever ask for.

  • Next, use the scripts and information you found on the Internet to create custom high-end swapping effects using the Microsoft® Script Editor included with FrontPage 2002. This script editor can be quickly launched right from within FrontPage and provides powerful tools to help build just the special effect you want. You can learn more about the Script Editor in FrontPage and how to get started using it by going to the following article High-end Scripting in Microsoft FrontPage version 2002 at:  http://www.microsoftfrontpage.com/content/ARTICLES/articles.htm

• Summary

  • As we have demonstrated, there are many ways FrontPage 2002 can help you create more interactive Web pages adding interest and important functionality to any small business online presence. Some of the interactive elements that we have covered in this white paper include discussion groups, interactive calendars, online video and streaming media, pop-up menus, banner ads, and image swaps as just a few ways to make your Web site more compelling to your customers.

• More Information

  • This paper has covered key issues of relevance and importance to any enterprise, small business, or individual evaluating why FrontPage 2002 is an excellent choice for creating more interactive Web sites for your business. The following list of resources will lead you to more information:

• Microsoft Resources

  • http://www.microsoft.com/Frontpage/ For information and resources on Microsoft FrontPage version 2002.

  • http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/sharepoint/"target="_blank"http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/sharepoint/  For information about collaborating on documents, and collecting team knowledge over the Internet or your corporate network with Microsoft Office XP and SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft.

  • http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/downloads/addin/default.asp  For information and downloads of add-ins for FrontPage at the new FrontPage Add-in Center.

  • http://www.bcentral.com/default.asp  For information and resources on Microsoft bCentral services.

  • http://www.microsoftfrontpage.com/content/ARTICLES/articles.htm  For articles on Microsoft Script Editor in FrontPage version 2002 and building Pop-menus using DHTML and FrontPage.