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Microsoft FrontPage is a web authoring and site management tool which hides much of the mystery and complexity behind designing web sites. In fact, it is nearly as easy to use as most common word processors. As such, many WCNet users have created their web sites using FrontPage. Some have encountered difficulty in making all their pages work properly once the were uploaded to the WCNet web server.
This document was created in an effort to explain what is involved in using FrontPage to create web sites that will work on the WCNet web server. (Interestingly, this document was created using FrontPage.)
You are expected to have a working knowledge of FrontPage to understand this document. It was written with FrontPage 98 (also known as FrontPage 3.0) in mind, but much of applies to the previous version (97/2.0) as well.
As you know, FrontPage consists of four major components: The FrontPage Editor, FrontPage Explorer, Personal Web Server, and FrontPage Server Administrator.
You typically start FrontPage via the
Front Page Explorer, either from your Start menu (as seen above) or via a FrontPage
Explorer shortcut like the one pictured at the right.
Using the Explorer, you can create and manage the various pages and files
associated with your web site. When it comes time to create and/or edit web pages, you use
the FrontPage Editor (pictured at the right).
Most of the"standard" features in the FrontPage Editor will work just fine. By standard, I'm referring to those which do not require a server with Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions. (See "What doesn't work" below for more.)
Style sheets, graphics, font changes, and so on will all work fine. You can use FrontPage to create Forms on your web pages, but keep in mind that you'll need a program on the server side (like MailMerge) to process the data which comes from them.
The following items generally don't work. Most of them are found in the Insert menu in the FrontPage Editor.
FrontPage keeps extra information (files and directories) in the same area as your web site. This information helps it keep track of links, images, and so on within your web site. However, this extra information does nothing for the WCNet web server so there is no point in uploading it.
Luckily, most of these extra files
are easy to locate and exclude. You'll find that there are several directories (folders)
in the top-level directory of your web site which begin with an underscore ("_")
in their names. All of those directories can be excluded.
Also, you'll find that in most sub-directories within your web site, there will also be a few of those directories which begin with underscores. Those, too, can be safely excluded.
You will likely encounter other mysterious problems if you build a very complex web site using FrontPage. This mostly due to Microsoft's eagerness to hide all the details from you. As a result, things which appear to be simple additions to your web site may, in reality, be very complex. FrontPage has no way of warning you when you've added items to your web sites which may not work properly (or at all) on all web servers. In their attempt to take over the Internet publishing market, they've boldly assumed that any web server you might try publishing on will contain FrontPage Server Extensions.
Their arrogance is saddening.
That's just what Microsoft wants you to ask me. Put simply, I don't trust them. When Microsoft first developed their FrontPage Server Extensions, they distributed the code necessary to build them. This allowed anyone to look at how the software worked and make sure it was safe to run before they installed it.
As it turns out, the software was not safe. It was very easy to break and do nasty things to a web server. Several individuals on the Internet pointed this out to Microsoft. Doing so apparently upset Microsoft. They eventually released "fixed" versions of their Extensions, but they elected not to ship the code with the "fixed" software. They effectively removed any way for someone to verify that the software was safe. In doing so Microsoft said, "Don't worry. Trust us. We're Microsoft."
The fact that no incidents have been reported with the newer extensions does not mean they are safe. It just means that it's more difficult to find the weaknesses in them.
Security though obscurity is no security at all. Microsoft has yet to learn that.
If you know of anything that is incorrect or has been left out of this document, please contact me. My e-mail address appears below.
See also:
CGI Scripts on WCNet
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