Creating a Home Page

Home Page | Saving & Previewing | Publishing Pages | Renaming or Deleting Pages

The first page you will want to create is your Home page. Give a lot of thought to the design of your home page because it is the first page visitors will see. If it is unattractive or takes too long to download, visitors will move on to other sites. Most visitors are only willing to wait about 8 seconds for a site to load. Limit the number and size of graphics on your home page to ensure faster download time.

Open a new page by selecting File, New, and Page. Select a blank page or pick a pre-designed template. Once your page appears, you will see four tabs at the bottom of the screen: Design, Split, Code, and Preview and Normal, HTML, and Preview in previous versions. Select the Design or the Normal tab to begin your work. You can preview your work by selecting the Preview tab or view HTML coding and add META tags by selecting the Split, Code or HTML tabs.
Set your Page Properties by right clicking anywhere on the page. When the Page Properties dialog box appears, select the General tab and Title —give your page an appropriate title. Now select the Background tab. Here you can select a background color or graphic, change default link colors, and/or create rollover effects for your hyperlinks. In the 2003 version of FrontPage, you can add a page description and keywords and FrontPage will automatically create the code for you.

You will also want to include on your home page any required logos, the content owner’s name and email address, when the website was last modified, and hot links.

You may also want this information to appear on all your pages or selected pages. This can be accomplish by using a web component, template, or shared border.

A Member of the University of Maine System

Last Modified: 02/21/07
These pages are currently being maintained from the
Phoebe Nylund, University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
Send comments, suggestions or inquiries to Phoebe Nylund

Saving and Previewing Pages

The first time you save a web page, you must use the SAVE AS feature. After that, you can just use SAVE. Always name and save your Home page as index.htm or default.htm. Search engines look for these pages automatically.

You can preview your web page by clicking on the Preview tab or by selecting File, Preview in Browser, Browser Type, and Preview. You must always save your page before previewing them in a browser. The best method of previewing your page is in a web browser because you see exactly how your page will appear on the Web. It is an accurate view and ensures that things are working correctly before publishing your page.

Selecting the option Preview in Browser.

Publishing Your Pages

Once your are sure your pages are working correctly and you have saved them, you will want to publish them to the "live" site. If you are working on the "live" site you will need to publish the pages back to your "local" site. Always publish your pages as soon as you make changes to your website, thus ensuring that a backup copy always exists in case of errors, server problems, or power failures. Your "local" site is the backup copy of your "live" site, but it is always a good idea to keep an additional backup copy on a CD or other storage device for added protection.

From your "local" site, click File, and Publish Site. A dialog box will appear asking for the Remote Web Site Location. Be sure the FrontPage or SharePoint Services is selected, as below. Type in the web address for your "live" site or use the browse button to look for your "live" web site address. You also have the option to publish all pages or just pages that have been changed on the Publishing tab. Normally, you would select the default of Changed Pages Only. Next you will be asked for your User ID and Password, provided by your web service provider. When you have answered all of FrontPages prompts, FrontPage will set up the "live" site. When your pages are ready to be published, a dialog box will appear with your current web site and remote web site pages. The first time you publish your site, you will only see the _private and Image folders in your "live" site. Click the Publish Web Site Button to publish your pages. Once your pages are published the two sites should look exactly alike. The next time you publish your pages, a blue arrow will indicate pages that have been changed and need to be republished to your remote site.

From your "local" site, click File, and Publish Site. A dialog box will appear asking for the Remote Web Site Location. Be sure the File System is selected, as below. Type in the address for your "local" site or use the browse button to look for your "local" web folder. Next you will be asked for your User ID and Password. Click the Publish Web Site Button to publish your pages. Once your pages are published the two sites should look exactly alike.

Publishing With Older FrontPage Versions

From your "local" site, click File, and Publish Web. A dialog box will appear asking for the Publish from and Publish to information. If it is the first time you are publishing your pages, a second dialog box will appear asking you for the destination of the published pages — Enter publish destination. Browse for your "live" web site address or just type in the correct address. Be sure the Published from and Published to information is correct before attempting to publish your pages. Next you will be asked for your User ID and Password. When you have answered all of FrontPages prompts, FrontPage will set up the "live" site and publish your pages. When your pages have been published, another dialog box will appear — click here to view your published web site. Just click on the prompt to view the published site and after viewing the site, click Done to close the dialog box.

Publish to dialog box.

The same process works for publishing from the "live" site to the "local" site. Your Publishing from information would be the "live" site and Publish to information the "local" site.

Renaming or Deleting Pages

To rename a web page, right-click on the file name, select Rename and name you page. A dialog box will appear telling you how many pages are linked to the page and ask you if you want to update all the pages. This is to ensure that hyperlinks aren't broken.

To delete a page, select the page, right-click on the file name, and select Delete. A dialog box will ask you if you are sure you want to delete this page. Answer "Yes" if you want to or "No" if you do not want to delete the page. This is a safety precaution for your benefit to ensure that you do not delete the wrong page.

If you make rename or delete files from your website, a prompt will appear, while attempting to publish the pages, telling you that information exists on the destination server (publishing pages to) but not in the current web (publishing pages from). It will ask if you want to delete the page(s). You can select “Yes” or “Yes to all” if you have numerous pages to remove from the destination site. Remember to read the prompts carefully so that you do not delete pages incorrectly or cause other errors to occur. Ask for help if the prompt seems confusing to you. You can always cancel deleting your pages by selecting the cancel button and delete them later.