Microsoft FrontPage Tips, Resources, and FAQs
Last updated: 7/19/2001

4/12/2000 I use Microsoft FrontPage to directly write, organize, and publish the Dux Computer Digest.  I am presently using FrontPage 2000 and have been using it for years, since version 1.0.  I've been told that, 'one either loves or hates FrontPage.'  Well, I don't usually express my feelings quite that strongly, but I will say there is much to like and much to dislike about the software.  I do know that I am absolutely dependent on it on the one hand and that it can be very frustrating on the other.   So, this is sort of a special part of our How to's.  Most of the questions are my own and most of the answers are those I learned the "hard way" or have had to scour the web looking for the answers.  I will start this article with a few items and try to build it over time.  Its character will  be free form will include comments and a growing wish list for improvements in future versions.  If there is enough interest in this subject, I may, in the future, add a FrontPage Forum to this web site.  Larry

Keyboard shortcuts for adding html hyperlinks in Microsoft Office applications... Highlight the text in the document (e.g, a FrontPage, FrontPage Express, Word, Excel) that you want to make into an Internet, etc. link, highlight the URL in the your browser address window, etc, Ctrl C to copy it, go back to the document, Ctrl K to open the Insert Hyperlink window, Ctrl V to past the URL and make it a hyperlink.

How to get rid of unwanted and unexplainable extra blank paragraphs.  I spent hours on this one...  Here is an example:

Need help with a network or computer problem?  The solution to your problem may already be in the 1,812 messages currently in our easily searched Forums.

It is a table with two rows.  At the time of this writing I had a bunch of these on my home page.  The problem, before I fixed it, was that Front Page would insert an extra blank line (paragraph) after "Forums."  You wouldn't see the extra line in Front Page 2000 when clicking Preview or in any other paragraphs that were identical when viewing HTML.  You would see it only when viewing it with a browser.  I have seen this problem a few times before and don't really know how I fixed then or what is really causing it.

The Solution...  Click Tools, Page Options, Click Reformat using the rules below, OK, and save the document.  I left the rest of the setting as thye were, default.  I have the Compatibility setting for Netscape and IE 3.0 and higher.

Question.   I have a third party Discussion Forum (not a FrontPage Discussion Forum) on my web site which uses Perl scripts.  Every time I publish my web site, FrontPage prompts me to delete files in the Discussion Forum in the remote web which are not present in my local copy of the site.   How do I stop FrontPage from checking the directory containing my Discussion forum?

A.  Make a subweb on your local copy of the web site with the same name as the directory containing the Discussion Forum on the remote site and do not publish to subwebs.

Question.  I have a third party discussion forum running on my virtual web server. It uses HTML files for the forum threads. Whenever I publish using FrontPage, the FrontPage extensions on the UNIX (freeBSD) server does a chmod on ALL HTML files, including those used by the forum. It changes permissions of the HTML files in the forum from -rw -rw -rw to -rw -r -r (I can see it do it and I can consistency repeat the problem). The result is that the programs used by the users of the forum can no longer write to the HTML thread files and error messages pop-up. I have the disussion forum masked-off on my local web with a subweb with the same name as the directory of my forum on the UNIX box. Yet, FP insists on changing things in the directory containing the forum files anyway.  Does anyone know how to prevent the FP server extensions from changing the permissons of HTML files on a UNIX server?

A.  (The answer to this one made me feel less than bright).  Put the Discussion Forum in a subweb on the remote site and do not publish to it.  (The remote site has to be running the FrontPage server extensions).

How to easily stop FrontPage-generated web pages from being cached by browsers.  As you may be aware, modern browsers will cache' web pages.  That is, they will make a local copy of the pages and the graphics within pages and put those files in the History folder.  The next time you visit the page, the browser will display the local copy of the page if it hasn't changed.  If part of your livelyhood depends on banner advertising, caching is something you don't want.  You can manually tell a browser not to cache a page by opening the page in FrontPage, Click File on the menu, select Properties (or right-click a blank spot on the page and select properties), click the Custom tab, and add a System Variable (HTTP-EQUIV) with the name "Expires" and a Value of "0."  The easy way is to download and install the Jimco  Meta Tags add-on.

Want to see the HTML tags in a page while editing in the Normal mode in FrontPage 2000?  Click View in the menu and click Reveal Tags.  The Keyboard shortcut is: Ctrl-/ a; repeat the shortcut and the tags go away.