FrontPage Support Documentation

WEBster Computing Services servers offers full support for Microsoft FrontPage and its server extensions.

Microsoft FrontPage is a software package for Windows and Windows NT. It was originally developed by Vermeer Technologies, and then bought out by Microsoft.  It is used to develop and manage Web sites and is generally considered one of the better site management packages available. Because some of its advanced capabilities require server-side support, its "Server Extensions" must be installed into your account before you can make use of those advanced features. If you do not need features such as fill-out forms, discussion forums, or searching, the Server Extensions are not required. To use Microsoft FrontPage without the Server Extensions, visit the Microsoft Web site for their Free Publishing Wizard.

Our FrontPage configuration has these features:

Activation:

Frontpage can be activated directly from your control panel.  Please note that activation or deactivation of frontpage can require you to upload your web files again, so make sure to make a backup of all files before enabling.

Publishing your website:


Before you can publish an html file to your web site with FrontPage, you must either have a page already created, or create a page.  Refer to your microsoft documentation for details.

Assuming you have pages created, to publish:
Open frontpage.
From the frontpage menu bar, choose File --> Publish Web.
Click on the Options button
In box below specify the location to publish your site to: enter the full URL for your site.
If this is the first time you are publishing your site, select Publish all pages...
Select Include subwebs. (Obviously, you will have put your actual domain name instead of 'mydomain.com')
Click the Publish button.
Enter your username and password.
Click Done.
If you have entered all the details correctly, your site should be published.

Important Things To Know (summary):

  1. Everytime you create a "New Web" on our server, we will have to restart your web deamon. We have now updated our Web Configuration to automatically reboot every 15 minutes if you have "Created A New Web".
  2. Frontpage is a good product, however its transfer protocol is temperamental. Therefore it is a good idea to have each of your directories created as their own web, and then "publish" it to your web.
  3. When you "Publish" or "Copy" your first web to our server you can put a "/" or leave it blank (depending on what version you're using) in the name of the web the destination web, and this should place your web in the "root web" directory.

    4. FrontPage will only work with fully qualified real domain names. (such as www.yourname.com), so you domain name needs to be fully in place before using frontpage with your account.
Troubleshooting Common Errors:

500 internal server error when trying to view site:
The most common cause is the use of ftp in uploading frontpage generated webpages.  This can damage the frontpage extensions. In this case the frontpage extensions will need to be reinstalled from your control panel (see activation above).

As a general rules of thumb you should not mix frontpage and ftp.  You should use one or the other to upload your files.  If frontpage pages are transferred by an ftp client, frontpage looses track of files and corrupts or damages them.  And even though the pages may be successfully uploaded, they will not be viewable due to a corrupted code.

Default page still shows up even after I have uploaded my index page:
You MUST DELETE the default page before your index page will show up.

Root Web Busy Error:
FTP to your site and remove the "service.lck" file in /www/_vti_pvt. This usually happens when an FP session is interrupted before completion.

Server Time Out:
This is an error in frontpage itself which has difficulty uploading extremely large sites.  This difficulty arises when the uploading link times out in the process of copying the web to our server. The only suggestion Microsoft has offered so far is to break the main web into a group of sub webs on your PC, then upload these individually.  Contact Microsoft directly for further information.

Front Page Extensions not Installed Error:
We often see this error being reported even when the extensions have been installed because frontpage extensions are easily corrupted due to the nature of the program.  If you get this error, please reinstall the frontpage extensions from your control panel and repair them if necessary.

Published Web Is Not There:
This will happen when the "Destination Web Name" is filled in when publishing to our server.  This box should be left blank. If you put any other name in this box it will create a subdirectory off of your root web and copy all of your files into it. Your site will exist under a subdirectory instead of at the top level /www where it should be.

Forms won't work through Secure Server:
The call to a cgi script using the Secure Server must not be within a webbot. Use a normal cgi call in your html script for Secure Server calls.

Search bot doesn't return any results:
The /www directory must be world readable AND you need to recalculate links BEFORE publishing (or after editing directly on the server). If it still doesn't work: FTP to the server and go to the /www/_vti_txt/default.wti directory. Delete any files that begin with "ALL.". Don't delete any other files. Then using Windows Explorer, do the same thing on your PC. Recalculate links, test locally with your browser and publish

FP starts the Web Publishing Wizard when I try to publish:
Cancel the operation and reinstall the FP extensions. They have been damaged.

Page renamed after Publishing:
The "Default Document" of your web is automatically renamed by the server to what is required by the configuration of the server. For example, if you've named the main page "index.html", it may be renamed "default.html". Just check the links to your main page to make sure they refer to it the same way.

Links to further Microsoft Documentation:
Microsoft help site
Microsoft automated help file
Microsoft Frontpage's Homepage