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Build a Website with FrontPage 2003

With a well-designed website, you can generate interest in your business, develop a good relationship with customers, help them select from your products, and even sell your products and services online. FrontPage 2003, the website design tool included with Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition, provides the features, flexibility and functionality to help you build a website. Use these basic steps to get started.

On This Page
1. Create the site structure1. Create the site structure
2. Add content to your site2. Add content to your site
3. Format using a theme3. Format using a theme
4. Add visual interest and usability4. Add visual interest and usability
5. Publish to the web5. Publish to the web
6. Market your site6. Market your site

1. Create the site structure

Once you have planned your site, it's easy to create it:

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From the Getting Started task pane, choose Create a new page or site.

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Under the New Website heading, choose More Website templates.

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Choose Empty Website and click OK.

Now you need to add some pages to your site, and the quickest way to do this is in Navigation View:

1.

Go to the View menu and choose Navigation.

2.

Just above and to the left of the big blank area, there is a toolbar. Click the New Page button to create your home page.

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Click on the home page, and then press your Insert key on the keyboard to create new pages underneath the home page. Repeat for as many sub-pages as you need.

To label your pages:

1.

Click on the home page again and press the Tab key on your keyboard.

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Type in a name for page 1 and press Tab again to name the next page.

To start working on a page, simply double-click on it and it will open up. To return to this view, click the Website tab at the top left of the page.

2. Add content to your site

Adding content to your pages can be as simple as typing text and formatting it. You'll notice that in many ways it looks and feels just like Microsoft Word. You can select text and apply formatting to it in just the same way.

If you already have text typed in a Word document, you can copy and paste it onto your page, or even just drag and drop the whole file directly onto the page.

3. Format using a theme

A FrontPage "theme" allows a designed format to be applied to your whole website for a professional, coordinated look. When using a theme, it is a good idea to make sure your headings and sub-headings are formatted using the heading styles. This will enable the theme to pick them up and format them accordingly. To apply a theme:

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Go to the Format menu and choose Theme.

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Browse the available themes in the Theme task pane.

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Click on a theme to apply it to the current page.

You can also create your own theme, or customise one of the existing ones by choosing other options in the Theme task pane.

4. Add visual interest and usability

Pictures will add visual interest to your website, but make sure they are not too large. The larger they are, the longer they will take to display on your customer's screen. To insert a picture, go to the Insert menu, choose Picture, and then select From File.

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To see how long a page will take to load for a visitor on a slow dialup connection, look at the right hand side of the row at the bottom of your screen.

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If you have lots of pictures you want to display on the same page, try the Photo Gallery option. You can find this if you go to the Insert menu and choose Picture.

To make sure users can navigate to different pages on your site, you will need to add some navigation bars. Choose Navigation from the Insert menu for options.

5. Publish to the web

It is technically possible to publish your website on a machine of your own, but an obvious downside to this is that you will have to make it available to prospective visitors on the internet all the time. That gives you a whole host of other issues to contend with, including hardware and security.

The best place to start is to get a technology provider or your internet service provider (ISP) to host your site for you. They can also help you register and purchase an address for your website. This is called a domain name.

Once you have a host and a domain name, the rest is easy: Simply choose Publish Site from the File menu and choose the method for publishing as instructed by your ISP. You may also be asked to supply a username and password provided by your ISP.

You can also publish and manage your website through the Remote Website view which you can display from the View menu.

6. Market your site

The next step is to make sure your customers know about your site, and visit it time and time again. Be sure to include your website address on all of your marketing literature and business stationery, but there are other things you can do too.

To encourage visitors to return to your site often, try the following:

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Try downloading your site on a slow connection to ensure it is usable by all visitors. They won't rush back if they know the home page takes two minutes to load.

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Keep it up-to-date. There is nothing more frustrating than a site that is clearly not maintained properly.

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Answer questions on your site. Encouraging visitors to e-mail questions to you and publishing the answers can be a great way to find new customers and provide useful information. It also shows you are a caring company, with expertise in your field.

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Keep an eye on your competitors' sites to make sure that you compare favourably.

External marketing options you might want to consider are:

Search engines: Potential customers who do not know you exist will have to search for the products and services you offer using a search engine such as Google, MSN Search or Yahoo. Making sure you appear in such searches isn't necessarily as simple as it first appears, so visit search engine sites and read how to ensure your site has the best possible chance.

Link exchanges: Why not find some other businesses that might be willing to trade links with you? This means you display a link to their website, in exchange for them linking to yours. Suitable candidates for link exchanges could be companies that offer complementary services to your own or simply other businesses who have the same target audience as you.

E-commerce: Another obvious way to keep customers coming back to your site is to actually sell your goods and services online. If you decide to add e-commerce to your site, it is wise to seek expert advice to set up your internet shop. You will need some "shopping basket" technology and tools for processing payments. There are many online shopping applications available which integrate with FrontPage. Your next step will be to do some research about the different options to determine which will suit you and your business the best.

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FrontPage 2003

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! Quick Tips

Templates and wizards in FrontPage can help you create a website more quickly by handling most of the structural work for you, leaving you free to concentrate on the content. Use templates and wizards to help create anything from a basic Web page to a complex, multi-page, interactive website.

Adding graphic, audio, and video files to your website adds to the download time for site visitors when they access your site. When planning your site, take into consideration the size, type, and number of files that you want to add.

Using the accessibility checker on Web pages you create or edit in Microsoft FrontPage helps you discover issues that are identified as being in conflict with established accessibility guidelines. Such issues make it difficult for people with disabilities to use your website.