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Web Page Creation with FrontPage Dynamic Web Templates

August 23rd 2005

The world has changed over the past decade or so.  Creating web pages has gotten easier, faster and cheaper.  There are a few programs that use WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) web development technology.  The two most prominent are Microsoft Front Page and Macromedia Dreamweaver.  We will review some of the advantages to using MS FrontPage.

Before the advent of web developing tools, designers would use notepad to design their pages.  They would sit down at a computer and type the HTML code in by hand and drag the code into a browser to see what it would look like.  If you have ever done any programming you will know this is tedious.

Creating a Web Page is similar to creating a document using a word processor.  You can create a webpage with just a little more effort.  Begin by clicking the File menu and selecting New and then blank page.  Type your document in Design view and save it.  After you upload the page anyone on the Internet can see it.  It is that simple. 

There are some advantages to using FrontPage.  I realized this in earlier versions.  Let’s say you created a website but wanted to change a minor detail on every page.  If you typed the page using a text editor you would need to change every page separately.  Not so with FrontPage.

FrontPage has a feature called Dynamic Web Templates (.dwt extension).  If you create a website using these DWT’s (earlier versions of FrontPage used Shared Borders) you can change all of the pages by modifying just one page.  I recommend you first create the DWTs, even before you create your first webpage.  Then begin creating your web pages, attaching a DWT to each one.    

Most webpage’s you see on the Internet are tables composed of cells.  There is a drop down menu in FrontPage that allows for table creation.  Create (insert) a 3 by 3 table.  Drag your mouse and select the three top cells in the top row.  Right mouse click the row and merge the cells.  This will merge the three top cells into one cell.  This is where the top ad banners will go.

Do the same thing for the bottom three cells.  This is good place to put the copyright notice and other links.  Most developers will put tables inside tables.  This will make your website look cleaner.  Play with the table properties to get the look you want.  You can change the border sizes, colors and more.

Placing tables inside other tables will make selecting “editable regions” easier.  These will be the areas on each page you can edit.  All other areas on a page can only be edited by opening the original DWT.  Editing the DWT will change all of the pages associated with it.

So after the DWT page(s) are created every page you create should be associated with one.  Usually I will create a new page, save it in a folder with a name (no spaces) associated with the topic, and then attach a DWT.  This is all before I start typing the page.

For this site we have created a dozen or so DWTs.  We have one for our main-pages, another for our health pages, another for our Sports pages, etc.  There are several places on the Internet you can visit for FrontPage tutorials.  

Future articles will cover publishing your website, images and hyperlinks.  You will need to use FrontPage to publish your site (not a FTP program) in order to take advantage of all of the features.  Hopefully you chose a website host that uses FrontPage extensions.  See my previous article for tips on choosing a web host.

If you have an expertise in DreamWeaver please submit an article here.  No need to make it a tutorial, just describe the features that you like and use.

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By Dan Wilson
Best Syndication Staff Writer

Microsoft FrontPage Books
 

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