Business is a growing part of the Web, and it is bound to get even bigger. Exciting developments down the road will make the Internet boom with activity. Now that the Internet is open to everyone and is coming alive with graphics and multimedia, more and more companies are jumping on the bandwagon-and doing it with style and purpose.
Think back to the days when a growing company had to design product brochures and pay for the expense of printing thousands of copies to distribute to potential customers. On top of the printing costs, the postage ate away at the budget. The Internet has changed all that. Now you can economically let everyone know that you are out there. You are telling not just your local community about yourself, but the world. There is beauty in that.
Unfortunately, the beauty is also a beast. Because of this vast accessibility, there is much competition. Therefore, you need to make the best impression that you can. With FrontPage's Corporate Presence wizard, you get off to a rapid running start. If you choose all the options in the wizard, you can generate fifteen pages, including links, in five minutes. Then all you have to do is edit the content and fill in the blanks.
The Corporate Presence wizard does not do all the work for you. You might want to get the following information ready before you start the wizard. You can edit it afterward, but it is much easier to do everything in one step. Take advantage of what the wizard does for you automatically. The following information is inserted into several Corporate Presence Web pages through the use of substitution bots. They take information variables that you enter as you design your web and place them on your page in designated fields.
Think about the contact information that you place on your pages, especially the telephone and fax numbers. Start with only e-mail addresses, and add more contact information as necessary. Your receptionist will thank you.
If you look up the word wizard in the dictionary, you see that it means a magician or a conjurer. The wizards in FrontPage perform magic, and they conjure up pages that might have otherwise taken you hours to produce. Though the pages are basic, you can customize your pages afterward. When you are pressed for time, though, wizards are the way to go.
You are probably already familiar with wizards. Many software programs use them. They make a tedious task simple by asking you questions. Based on your answers, different option screens appear, and you choose what you want.
This chapter shows a Web site for a growing interior design firm, ACME Interiors. Its pages include all the available options. With this site as guide, you can start using the Corporate Presence wizard. The steps are
The first screen of the Corporate Presence wizard contains some brief introductory text. It tells you that the wizard will ask you a series of questions. Wizards are good at that; it is their job.
Beneath the picture of the open door at the left of the screen, there is a status bar. The dots in the bar tell you how far along you are.
There are buttons on the bottom of the wizard screen. Here is how you use them:
Click Next now. In the second screen of the Corporate Presence Wizard, you choose the types of pages to include in your Web site. The options are
A home page is required. If you select a search form, a text search page named search.htm is created at your site. Figure 4.1 shows an example. It enables visitors to your site to search through it for words or phrases. The text search page uses a Search bot, which places a search form with a textbox and two pushbuttons on your page.
Figure 4.1 : The text search page allows visitors to
search for words or phrases in your Web pages.
| NOTE |
The Search bot is a form handler. To use any of the forms that FrontPage generates, you need the FrontPage Server Extensions installed on your target server. If this is not possible, you can process the form with a custom CGI script. |
After you make your selections, click Next to continue.
The third screen of the Corporate Presence wizard asks what topics you want to include on your home page. The home page is, appropriately, the first page in your web. This is a page that should get people's attention. Tell them who you are and what you do.
Look at the examples in Figures 4.2 through 4.4. They show how a home page appears for a large interior decorating company. They show all the options that you can choose.
After you make your selections, click Next to continue.
If you elect to include a What's New Page in your Web site, you select options for it in the fourth screen. Figures 4.5 and 4.6 show the completed What's New page for the interior decorating company. The options for this page are
After you make your selections, click Next to continue.
If you elect to include a Products and Services page in your site, you choose options for it on two screens. The first screen asks how many of each type of page you want to create.
In the Products field, enter the number of product data sheets that you want. If you enter 0, no product pages are created, and the Products and Services page is instead titled Company Name Services Page. Five product data sheets are created for the interior design company.
In the Services field, enter the number of service description pages that you want. If you enter 0, no service pages are created, and the Products and Services page is instead titled Company Name Products Page. Three service description pages are created for the interior design company.
When the Products and Services page is created, it provides links to all the product data sheets and service description pages in your Web site. Annotation bots guide you through what needs to be changed or included on this page.
Figures 4.9 and 4.10 show an example of a completed Products and Services page. In the upper portion, shown in Figure 4.9, you see a brief description of the products that the interior design company offers and links to the five pages specified in the wizard screen. In the lower portion of the page, shown in Figure 4.10, you see a brief description of the services that the company offers and links to the three service description pages. The footer appears at the bottom of the page.
| TIP |
If you need to customize your product data sheets and service description pages beyond what the templates offer, create one page. Make your general changes, and then save the page as a template. This saves you the bother of making all the changes on each product page. |
After you make your selections, click Next to continue.
Based on your selections from the previous screen, you select the information that you want to include on your product data sheets and service description pages in this screen. Different options appear for the product data sheets and the service description pages.
Product data sheets tell visitors to your site about the various products that your company offers. In Figures 4.11 through 4.13, the interior design company advertises one of its furnishings. A section is provided on the page to describe the key benefits of the product. Each product sheet can include
When users submit an information request form to your site, they receive a confirmation page. This confirmation page, shown in Figure 4.14, acknowledges that their request was received at your site. This information is stored in Web page format (inforeq.htm) in the _private subdirectory of your web.
Figure 4.14: When users submit an information request form, they receive a confirmation page.
Service description pages tell visitors to your site about the various services and capabilities of your company. A section is provided on the page to describe the key benefits of its products. Figures 4.15 through 4.17 show a service description page at the interior decorating company's site.
You can choose the following options for service description pages:
After you make your selections, click Next to continue.
If you elect to include a feedback form on your page, you are asked what you want to collect from visitors when they submit feedback to your site. Figures 4.19 and 4.20 show the feedback form for the interior design company.
The feedback form enables visitors to your site to send comments to you about your site, company, products, or services. Annotation bots show you where changes are necessary on the page. A Save Results bot for the Comments section uses a scrolling textbox, a drop-down menu, textboxes, and pushbuttons.
When users submit information to your site with the feedback form, a confirmation page is generated. Figure 4.21 shows the confirmation page for the interior design company's feedback form.
Figure 4.21: The confirmation page for the feedback form.
You can ask for the following information from users. Textboxes appear in the feedback form to hold responses.
After you make your selections, click Next to continue.
If you elect to include information request forms on your product data sheets and service description pages, you are asked how to store the information retrieved from the feedback form. You can choose one of two options:
If you elect to have a Table of Contents page in your web, a screen asks what options to include in it. Figures 4.22 and 4.23 show the table of contents that is automatically generated by FrontPage for the interior design company's site.
The options for a Table of Contents page are
| NOTE |
If you generate the table of contents automatically, be sure to use the File | Page Properties command to change the title of each page. The Table of Contents bot uses the page titles when it generates the contents. |
After you make your selections, click Next to continue.
Next, you select what you want to appear at the top and bottom of all your Web pages. The following items can appear at the top of the page:
The following items can appear at the bottom of the page:
After you make your selections, click Next to continue.
You are asked what type of graphics should appear on your page. A preview of each style appears in the wizard screen when you press its radio button. The options are
The Plain-No Graphics option produces text-only pages.
You can customize the colors for the background and text using the screen shown in Figure 4.24. The choices that you make here are saved to your web in a file titled Web Colors (filename _private/style.htm). You can base the style of other pages on this one. This is a great improvement added to FrontPage 1.1.
Figure 4.24: The Corporate Presence wizard has a built-in style page generator.
The steps are
| TIP |
Give your site visitors' eyes a break. If you want to use white for the background, soften it with a hint of color. High contrast, such as black text on a white background, tires the eyes. To choose a custom color, click the Define Custom Colors button in the Color dialog box. Add the color to the Custom Colors section. |
The wizard asks whether you want to tell visitors to your site that it is under con-struction. If you indicate yes, an Under Construction icon is included on your pages. The only catch is that you must remember to remove it when you are done building the page.
After you make your selection, click Next to continue.
Now you enter the location information that you gathered at the beginning of this chapter. This information is included in various locations on your pages through the use of Substitution bots.
The figures in this chapter show the following location information:
Full name of company: ACME Interiors, Inc. One word version of name: ACME Street address: 123 Busy Street, Anycity, NY 00000
After you enter your information, click Next to continue.
Next, you enter the contact information. This information is included in various locations on your pages through the use of Substitution bots.
Enter the following information:
Telephone number: 313-555-1212 Fax number: 313-555-1212 Webmaster's E-mail address: webmaster@www.provider.com E-mail for general information: sales@acmecorp.com
After you enter your information, click Next to continue.
The final screen of the Corporate Presence wizard asks whether you want to view the To Do list after the web is created. If you do not want to view the list, uncheck the option.
To create the Web site with the choices that you made in the wizard, click the Finish button. The FrontPage Explorer generates files based on your decisions, and your Web site appears.
Figure 4.25 shows the To Do List created with the Corporate Presence wizard. You no doubt will want to add more tasks after you review the pages.
Figure 4.25: The Corporate Presence wizard places some tasks in your To Do list automatically.
Figure 4.26 shows the Corporate Presence Web pages displayed in the FrontPage Explorer's Link View. The cursor indicates the icon in the toolbar that you click to select this view.
Figure 4.26: The Corporate Presence Web pages shown in the FrontPage Explorer's Link View.
The pages and graphics are displayed in the FrontPage Explorer's Summary View. The cursor indicates the icon that you click to display your webs in this view. Summary View is handy when you are working with large webs because you can sort the content into categories.
Table 4.1 describes all the pages created with the Corporate Presence wizard. Table 4.2 describes all the graphics included in the images subdirectory of your corporate- presence web.
| Filename | Description |
| index.htm | Home page |
| feedback.htm | Feedback Form page |
| news.htm | What's New page |
| pr01.htm | Press Release page 1 |
| pr02.htm | Press Release page 2 |
| pr03.htm | Press Release page 3 |
| prod##.htm | Product data sheet pages |
| products.htm | Products and Services Page |
| search.htm | Text search page |
| serv##.htm | Service description pages |
| toc.htm | Table of Contents page |
| _private/inforeq.htm | Results from Form 1 of Prod01 or Serv01 |
| _private/logo.htm | Included Logo page |
| _private/navbar.htm | Included navigation links |
| _private/style.htm | Web colors |
| Filename | Description |
| bfeed.gif | Navigation bar button, Feedback Form page |
| bhome.gif | Navigation bar button, home page |
| bnews.gif | Navigation bar button, What's New page |
| bprdsrv.gif | Navigation bar button, Products and Services page |
| bsrch.gif | Navigation bar button, Search page |
| btoc.gif | Navigation bar button, Table of Contents page |
| bullet.gif | Bullets used for service description |
| div.gif | Horizontal bar dividers |
| hfeed.gif | Header graphic, Feedback Form page |
| hhome.gif | Header graphic, home page |
| hnews.gif | Header graphic, What's New page |
| hprdsrv.gif | Header graphic, Products and Services page |
| hprods.gif | Header graphic, product data sheets |
| hservs.gif | Header graphic, service descriptions page |
| hsrch.gif | Header graphic, Search page |
| htoc.gif | Header graphic, Table of Contents page |
| logo.gif | Company logo |
| prodimg.gif | Product image for the product data sheet |
| smallnew.gif | New! graphic for the What's New page |
| undercon.gif | Under Construction icon |
| texture.jpg | Background texture image that you choose |
Just think-you did all this in a matter of minutes. It is definitely worthwhile to start with the Corporate Presence wizard.
Wizards are like magic. In a matter of minutes, you created fifteen pages, complete with link and graphic placeholders. This is especially impressive considering how long it would have taken you to accomplish all this using other methods.
In this chapter, you stepped through the Corporate Presence wizard to create a corporate presence on the Web. The pages described your company and the products and services you have to offer. The wizard also generated pages that allowed visitors to interact with you from your Web site, through feedback or information requests. You learned how to customize your corporate presence site by choosing several different options available in the wizard. The pages you created were linked for you automatically by the wizard.
To continue with the pages that you created with the Corporate Presence wizard:
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| My remote server requires that I use a home page with a name other than index.htm. Do I have to correct links on many pages if I rename my home page? |
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| In the corporate-presence web, all the links to the home page appear in the Included Navigation Links page. An Include bot places this navigation bar on several pages, which is why the pages have links to the home page. If your home page must be named something different when it is on your Web site, highlight the page title in any view of the FrontPage Explorer. Choose Edit | Properties, or use the Alt+Enter shortcut. In the Properties dialog box, type the new page name, and click the Apply button. The Confirm Updating Links dialog box asks whether you want to update the links that reference this page. Choose Yes. |
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| Do I have to keep my files in the directories that were made when the Web was created? |
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| No. New features in FrontPage 1.1 enable you to move files to different directories in your Web and to correct any broken links as you do so. You can edit the page properties and include a subdirectory name before the page name. If the subdirectory does not exist in your Web, it is created. |
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| What are all those other directories and files included in the Web that I just created? It looks as though FrontPage created copies of all my files in other directories. |
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| Those additional directories include the FrontPage Server Extensions, where applicable, and information used by the server administrator. If you use some of FrontPage's advanced features-including some of the bots-you must keep all those directories and files in your Web. The HTM files in the extra directories contain information for the FrontPage Server Extensions. |
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| I cannot see the purple text of the Annotation bots when I open my pages in another browser. Why? |
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| The Annotation bots are designed for just that reason. They enable you to put notes on a page to remind you of what needs to be done on it and where. You can view the Annotation bot text from within the FrontPage Editor, but it does not appear in other browsers, such as the Internet Explorer or Netscape. Likewise, if you place an Annotation bot on a page to remind yourself of something, you should add the item to the To Do list at the same time. This helps you keep track of things much more easily. |
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| Where do the Substitution bots get the company information? |
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| The Corporate Presence wizard places the company information that you entered into the Web settings. You can find it if you select Tools | Web Settings and then choose the Parameters tab of the Web Settings dialog box. |
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| The responses from all my product data sheets and service description pages are going to one file, inforeq.htm, on my web. Can I separate the responses into different files? |
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| When you initially create your web, all information request forms on the products and services pages store the retrieved information in the inforeq.htm file. If you want to create individual retrieval files for each page, for example, you need to edit the Save Results bot on each product and service page to point to another file. Simply copy the inforeq.htm file and save it under different names. You also need to edit the Save Results Bot properties of the products and services pages to point to the correct results file, as outlined in Chapter 20. |
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| How do I replace the logo image in the corporate-presence web? |
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If your logo is saved in GIF format, use the File | Import command to add the image to the web. The Add File button invokes the Add File to Import List dialog box. Add the image to the Import File to Web list, and use the Edit URL button to rename it to
Click the Import Now button. The old logo image is replaced.images/logo.gif If your logo image is saved in a format other than GIF, open the web's Included Logo page (logo.htm) in the FrontPage Editor. Use the Insert | Image command to add your logo to your page. This enables you to import a wide variety of graphic types. These procedures are explained in more detail in Chapter 11, "Sprucing Up Your Pages." |
