Chapter 4

Lots of Pages-The Template Way

• Working with Pages
• Opening an Existing Web
• Creating a Page from a Template
• Creating a Page from a Wizard
• Linking to a New Page Based on a Template
• Saving Pages to the Web
• Saving Pages as Files
• Page Templates You Can Use Without Server Extensions
• Meeting Agenda
  • Bibliography Page
  • Directory of Press Releases
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Glossary of Terms
  • Lecture Abstract
  • Office Directory
  • Seminar Schedule
  • Software Data Sheet
• Pages that Use Runtime Bots
  • Employment Opportunities
  • Product or Event Registration Page
• Creating Templates of Your Own
• Building the Template
• Saving a Page as a Template
• Workshop Wrap-Up
  • Next Steps
  • Q&A

Are you someone who likes to get things done quickly and efficiently? I am. Sometimes my creativity is blocked, while other times I just want to get the groundwork done in a hurry so that I can get to the fun part of dressing up the pages. That is what I enjoy the most.

If you are pressed for time or short on ideas for pages, FrontPage has a bountiful supply of templates from which you can choose. Although most of the pages are designed for business purposes, they give you a basic structure to work from. You can modify the content in any way you choose. There are some good ideas in these templates. They can help get those creative cells working in your brain.

Working with Pages

When you work with pages in FrontPage, you do most of your work in the FrontPage Editor. You should also have the FrontPage Explorer running concurrently. By doing so, you maintain your links and organize all your web pages and images into folders.

By far, the quickest way to create pages is to use the templates and wizards provided with FrontPage. In addition to the seven web templates and wizards, there are twenty-five additional page templates and wizards; by studying their construction, you learn many of FrontPage's features. As you become more familiar with the FrontPage features, you can customize the templates to better suit your needs.

Opening an Existing Web

You cannot get all your work done in one day. Most likely, when you create new pages, you save them to a web that already exists on your computer. It is simple to open an existing web to save pages to it.

To open a web that you created using the Web server:

1. From the FrontPage Explorer, choose File | Open FrontPage Web, or use the Open FrontPage Web button on the toolbar. The Open FrontPage Web dialog box appears. (See Figure 4.1.)
   
2. In the Web Server or File Location drop-down menu, choose the server or directory in which you created the web.
3. Check the Connect Using SSL checkbox if you want to connect to a server that supports Secure Socket Layer (SSL) communications.
4. Click the List Webs button. A list of the webs on that server appears.
5. In the FrontPage Webs list, highlight the web you want to open.
6. Click OK or press Enter to open the web. The web appears in the FrontPage Explorer window.
   Figure 4.1 : Use the Open FrontPage Web dialog box to open an existing web.

Creating a Page from a Template

Now that you have a web open, you can add pages to it. Use the FrontPage Editor to create new pages and add them to the web.

To create a new page, do the following:

1. From the FrontPage Explorer, choose Tools | Show FrontPage Editor or use the Show FrontPage Editor button on the toolbar. The FrontPage Editor opens.
2. From the FrontPage Editor, choose File | New (Ctrl+N).The New Page dialog box shown in Figure 4.2 appears.
3. From the Template or Wizard list, highlight the template from which you want to create your page. All available templates are listed in Tables 4.1 through 4.3.
4. Click OK or press Enter. Your page appears in the FrontPage Editor.
   Figure 4.2 : Use the New Page dialog box to select the template or wizard from which you want to create your page.

Creating a Page from a Wizard

The steps you follow to create a page from a wizard are basically the same as those you use to create a page from a template. Table 4.4 shows the page wizards that are provided with FrontPage, and the chapters in this book that discuss the procedures.

To create a new page from a wizard:

1. From the FrontPage Editor, choose File | New, or use the shortcut Ctrl+N. The New Page dialog box appears.
2. Highlight the wizard that you want to create your page from (Database Connector Wizard, Form Page Wizard, Frames Wizard, or Personal Home Page Wizard).
3. Click OK or press Enter. The first screen of the wizard appears.

Linking to a New Page Based on a Template

You can create a new page and a link on an existing page at the same time. When you create a new page in this manner, you can base the new page on one of the templates discussed in this chapter.

1. On the originating page, select the text, image, or hotspot that you want the user to click to activate the link.
2. Choose Edit | Hyperlink (Ctrl+K), or click the Create or Edit Hyperlink button on the FrontPage standard toolbar. The Create Hyperlink dialog box appears.
3. Click the New Page tab, shown in Figure 4.3. Enter the title of the page in the Page Title field, and its URL in the Page URL field.
   
4. If the page is to be located in a frame set, enter the name of the frame in which it appears in the Target Frame field. By default, the Edit New Page Immediately option is selected. This opens the page in the FrontPage Editor right away so that you can work on the new page. If you prefer to continue working on your current page, you can add the new page to the To Do List. Check the Add Page to To Do List radio button.
5. Click OK. The New Page dialog box appears.
6. From the Template or Wizard field, select the template on which to base the new page. Choose OK. The page appears in the FrontPage Editor window by default. If you selected to add the page to your To Do List, the page is added to the current web and you return to the FrontPage Editor screen.
   Figure 4.3 : The New Page tab allows you to create a link to a new page.

Saving Pages to the Web

After you create or edit your pages, you save them to your FrontPage Web. The web can be located on your server or on your local or network hard drive, as discussed in Chapter 1 "Getting Started." If there is no web open when you save the page, you will be prompted to open a web and save the page again.

To save your page to the current web, follow these steps:

1. From the FrontPage Editor, choose File | Save (Ctrl+S), or click the Save button on the Standard toolbar. The Save As dialog box shown in Figure 4.4 appears.
   
2. In the Page Title field, enter a title for your new page.
3. In the File path within your FrontPage Web field, enter the URL of the new page. By default, FrontPage saves the page to the web's main folder. If you want to save the page to a subfolder in your web, the subfolder must already exist in your current web.
   If, for example, you want to save the page to the web's _private directory, edit the URL as follows:
   _private/yourpage.htm
4. Click OK or press Enter to save the file to the current web.
   Figure 4.4 : The Save As dialog box.

Saving Pages as Files

You can also use the Save As dialog box to save your page to another location on your local or network hard disk.

1. From the FrontPage Editor, choose File | Save As. The Save As dialog box shown in Figure 4.4 appears.
2. In the Page Title field, enter a title for your new page.
3. Click the As File button. The Save As File dialog box appears.
4. Locate the folder to which you want to save your page.
5. Enter a filename for the page in the File name field. In the Save as type field, choose the file format to which you want to save the page. Choices are HTML Files (*.htm, *.html), Preprocessed HTML (*.htx, *.asp), and Hypertext templates (*.htt).
6. Click Save. Your page is saved to the directory and you return to the FrontPage Editor.

Page Templates You Can Use Without Server Extensions

You can use the basic page templates regardless of whether you have the FrontPage Server Extensions on your target Web server or not. They use the basic features of FrontPage, as well as the more commonly used FrontPage bots. In FrontPage, what you see is what you get. The page templates make great Web pages possible.

This chapter highlights some of the page templates from which you can choose. Table 4.1 shows where you can find examples of the remaining page templates and wizards.

Meeting Agenda

The Meeting Agenda template, shown in Figure 4.5, describes the date, time, location, and purpose of a meeting. The topics for discussion and a list of attendees also appear on the page. Footer information shows when the page was most recently updated.

Figure 4.5 : The Meeting Agenda template.

Bibliography Page

The Bibliography template, shown in Figure 4.6, provides a list of publications. For each publication, you see the author's last name and first initial, the publication title, the city and state where it was published, and the name of the publisher.

Figure 4.6 : The Bibliography template.

Directory of Press Releases

The Directory of Press Releases template, shown in Figure 4.7, helps you organize press release pages by date and title. The most recent entries appear at the top. You need to add links to the press release pages that appear on your site.

Figure 4.7 : The Directory of Press Releases template.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Frequently Asked Questions template, shown in Figure 4.8, provides a numbered table of contents of the questions that appear on the page. It uses bookmarks and links to jump to each question and answer that appears on the page.

Figure 4.8 : The Frequently Asked Questions template.

Glossary of Terms

The Glossary of Terms template, shown in Figure 4.9, contains definitions for the terms used in a given subject. Each section name is designated by a letter of the alphabet. You create new entries in alphabetical order inside the appropriate section.

Figure 4.9 : The Glossary of Terms template.

Lecture Abstract

The Lecture Abstract template, shown in Figure 4.10, announces an upcoming lecture, talk, or meeting. The title of the lecture appears at the top of the page. The name of the speaker, his or her role and organization, and the date of the lecture follow. You add an abstract of the lecture and the topics covered in the appropriate fields. A biography of the speaker appears at the bottom of the page. There is also a link to a page that lists other seminars or workshops.

Figure 4.10 : The Lecture Abstract template.

Office Directory

The Office Directory template is useful if your company has many offices scattered throughout the United States, Canada, and other countries. Every state appears on this page, as well as every Canadian province and several foreign countries. A portion of this list is shown in Figure 4.11. Delete the ones that do not apply. The page also includes a link to an example (shown in Figure 4.12) of how you should display your office information.

Figure 4.11 : The top portion of the Office Directory template.

Figure 4.12 : You can enter location information for each office.

Seminar Schedule

The Seminar Schedule template, shown in Figure 4.13, presents a conference schedule. Bookmarks and links provide navigation throughout the form. Each session includes the title of the lecture and the speaker's name, role, and organization.

Figure 4.13 : A Seminar Schedule template.

Software Data Sheet

The Software Data Sheet template, shown in Figures 4.14 and 4.15, includes a graphic or screen shot of a software product; its key benefits and features; a section for system requirements, pricing, and availability; and company contact information.

Figure 4.14 : The top portion of the Software Data Sheet page provides a graphic of the software and shows the key benefits and features of the product.

Figure 4.15 : The second portion describes system requirements, and pricing and availability of the software.

Pages that Use Runtime Bots

Some templates use the advanced bots as form handlers. These advanced bots require that the FrontPage Server Extensions exist on your target Web server. Alternatively, you can specify a scripting language or database directive to handle the forms on the pages.

Pages generated with the FrontPage page templates look as though they took hours on your part. No one has to know that you generated them in a matter of minutes.

Employment Opportunities

The Employment Opportunities template notifies others of available jobs at your company. The form begins with a bulleted list of available positions and bookmarked links to appropriate sections on the page. (See Figure 4.16.) Each position contains a job description, applicant requirements, and contact information. (See Figure 4.17.)

Figure 4.17 : Each position is described.

Figure 4.18 : Contact information for general inquiries.

A General Inquiries section follows the list of openings. (See Figure 4.18.) It notifies visitors whom to contact if they want further information on the openings in your company.

Figure 4.16 : A list of available positions appears at the top of the Employment Opportunities page.

The Personnel File section on the page asks potential applicants about their current responsibilities and relevant experience. Contact information is also entered in this form. (See Figure 4.19.)

Figure 4.19 : The Personnel File section of the page.

Product or Event Registration Page

The Product or Event Registration template enables visitors to your site to register a product serial number or to register for an event, as shown in Figure 4.20. Contact information is entered in the upper portion of the Registration page. The lower portion can be modified to enable visitors to register for an event. Users enter personal information in various fields on the form. A check list provides multiple options from which they can select. The form also contains fields for the registration or serial number of a product.

Figure 4.20 : The Product or Event Registration Template.

Creating Templates of Your Own

Sure, the templates and wizards provided with FrontPage do save you time-but you think they need more spice. You'd like to develop your own page templates from which you can choose. You'll find that using templates is the best way to save time while also maintaining a consistent look and feel in your Web site. FrontPage allows you to create your own templates on which to base the pages in your web.

There are a couple of ways in which you can build a page template. One way is to create the page as a standalone page - that is, don't select any content or images from your current web when you build the page. When you build a page template in this manner, FrontPage asks whether you want to save the images to the template directory when you save your page.

However, it's also nice to build templates around other content you have in your web. For example, to create the page shown in Figure 4.21, a table was inserted. Each cell in the table is assigned a different background image. A placeholder graphic is inserted into the top cell and is replaced by an appropriate header graphic when a page is created from the template.

Figure 4.21 : This page template was built using images and Include bots that contain elements from the web that were currently opened in the FrontPage Explorer.

The left cell in the second row uses an Include bot to insert a navigation links page from the current web. This navigation links page contains a link to the home page in the web, as well as to pages that exist in one section of the web.

The right cell in the second row contains placeholder text for the page title. A timestamp informs the user when the page was last updated. A Comments section, located between the two horizontal lines, is replaced by the page contents. Another Include bot places a footer page from the current web at the bottom of the page. Finally, the style sheet used in the current web is assigned to the page template.

In the Beta 2 Release of FrontPage, you are not prompted to save the included pages and images to the template directory when you save a page as a template. Afterward, when you try to create a new page from this template, you might receive several warning messages as you load the template. FrontPage tells you that the included page doesn't appear to be an .html file, and asks if you want to include it anyway. Usually, you reply Yes. Then, as FrontPage tries to load the images, you get more messages saying that the images can't be found. When your page finally opens, it appears as though none of your work is there!

First, try saving the new page to your web. Close it and reopen it again in the FrontPage Editor to see if the broken links are still there. If they are, you can use the Tools | Verify Hyperlinks command in the FrontPage Explorer to repair them. The steps to verify links are discussed in Chapter 28, "Testing and Publishing Your Web."

There is another way to get around this. After you save your page as a template, you can use the Windows 95 (not FrontPage) Explorer or File Manager to make copies of the images and other items that are included on the page, and then locate them in the page template directory. Keep in mind that you must use the same relative directory structure. For example, if your images are located in an images subdirectory in your web, you must also create an images subdirectory in the page template directory and copy the images into it. If your included pages are located in the _private directory in your web, they must also be located in a _private directory in the template folder, and so on. When you create the page from the template now, the images and Include bots will appear on the page. After this, you'll need to follow two steps:

1. Edit any Include bots on the new page to point to the original included files in your web, and not those in the template directory.
2. When you save the page to your web, FrontPage asks if you want to save the images to your web. There is no "Use Existing" option on this dialog box, so you'll have to reply Yes if the images are current.

Building the Template

When you build your page template, complete as much of the typical page content as you can. Add your color schemes, choose your background, text, and link colors, and add background images. Enter as much general placeholder text as you can, and use the Insert | Comment command to add comments to your page where you think your memory might need refreshing later. Put placeholder graphics on the page, indicating the size of the graphic (as shown in Figure 4.21) as a quick reminder. The more common ground you create on your template, the less you have to remember when you edit the content. This makes everything consistent.

Saving a Page as a Template

You use the File | Save As command to save a page as a template. The page is saved into a special template directory, and later appears in the New Page dialog box when you create a new page. To save your page as a template, do the following:

1. After your page is complete, choose File | Save As. The Save As dialog box appears.
2. Enter a title for the page in the Page Title field, and a URL in the File path within your FrontPage Web field. This title will also appear in the New Page dialog box after you save your page as a template. Therefore, the title should be descriptive enough so that you know what web or page your template will be used for. For example, enter the following:
   Personal Site Links Page
3. Click the As Template button. The Save As Template dialog box appears.
4. The title you entered in step 2 appears by default in the Title field of the Save As Template dialog box. Leave this setting as it is.
5. The URL you entered in step 2 appears in the Name field of the Save As Template dialog box. An extension should not be added in this field. This name is used for both the template folder and the filename. Enter the following name:
   mylinkpg
   The template directory is named mylinkpg.tem, and the page template is named mylinkpg.htm.
6. Enter a description for the template. When you create a new page based on the template, this description appears at the bottom of the New Page dialog box. Enter the following description:
   Creates links pages for my personal Web site on myservername.com.
7. Click OK to save the page as a template.

If you installed FrontPage using the default settings, a new directory named mylinkpg.tem is created in the Program Files/Microsoft FrontPage/Pages subdirectory. Now, whenever you create a new page, this template is listed in the New Page dialog box.

Workshop Wrap-Up

This chapter discussed many of the built-in templates and wizards provided with FrontPage. Much work and thought has gone into these pages. The webs and pages generated with FrontPage can save you a great deal of time.

In this chapter, you learned how to open an existing web and how to add pages to it based on the FrontPage page templates. You reviewed the features of each page template. You learned how to save new pages to your web and how to create templates of your own.

Next Steps

In the next chapter, you will create a corporate Web site that combines many of FrontPage's wizards and templates.

To learn how to edit the pages covered in this chapter, check out the following chapters:

• To add or edit bookmarks and links, see Chapter 7 "Getting From Here to There."
• To create and edit the various types of lists, see Chapter 9, "Organizing Information with Lists."
• To work with images and other enhancements, see Chapter 10, "Sprucing Up Your Pages."
• To add or edit the basic bots into your pages, see Chapter 14, "Automating Pages with Bots."
• To edit the form fields included in these pages, see Chapter 21, "Fields-The Building Blocks of Forms." Chapter 22, "Runtime Bots-The Heartbeat of FrontPage Forms," shows you how to edit the properties of the form bots mentioned in this chapter.

Q&A