What Is a Web Site?

FrontPage is designed to work with Web sites and not just Web pages. A Web site (called a Web in previous versions of FrontPage) is a collection of files and folders that are all related to each other. A FrontPage Web site is also defined as a group of related files and folders, but it also shares other elements that specifically make it a FrontPage Web site.

The following FrontPage features apply to a Web site. If you need to change one of these settings for a section of your site, you should create a new subsite from that section.

• Setting up permission for specific users to access a site (Some hosting companies and ISPs don't allow this.)

• Shared border content

• Themes applied to the site instead of to a specific page

• Navigation structure defined in Navigation view

• Web site tasks defined in Tasks view

• Parameters for use with the Substitution Web component

• The ability to publish all or part of the Web site to a remote Web server

NOTE

Not all hosting companies will allow you to control permissions on your FrontPage Web site. If they don't allow you to control permissions, your Permissions menu might be disabled or you might receive an error message informing you that you do not have sufficient privileges when you try and change permissions.

For more information on parameters and the Substitution Web component, see "Using Web Components, Shared Borders, and Link Bars," p. 167.

NOTE

Shared border content is listed for those who are still using the feature from Web sites created in previous versions of FrontPage. Beginning with FrontPage 2003, the Dynamic Web Template feature is preferred over shared borders.

Anatomy of a FrontPage Web Site

When you create a FrontPage Web site, FrontPage adds special folders and files that describe the Web site to FrontPage. Each one of the folders begins with _vti and contains a specific type of information called metadata.

NOTE

The vti in FrontPage's configuration folders stands for Vermeer Technologies, Inc., the company from which Microsoft purchased FrontPage version 1. The FrontPage you use today bears no resemblance to that early version.

A FrontPage Web site contains the following special _vti folders.

• _vti_cnf Contains information on each file in the Web site such as when the file was last saved, who saved it, the size of the file, and so on.

• _vti_log This folder is only added to the root Web site and contains log files if logging is enabled on the Web site.

• _vti_pvt Contains numerous files that describe the Web site itself. In the root Web site, this folder also contains a file with a list of all subsites.

• _vti_script Contains the files generated by Microsoft Index Services when the Web site is configured to use Index Services to perform site searches.

• _vti_txt Contains the text indices when the FrontPage search engine is used to perform site searches instead of Index Services.

If you can't see some of the _vti folders, see "FrontPage Metadata Folders Not Visible" in the "Troubleshooting" section of this chapter.

CAUTION

Don't modify the content in any of the _vti folders yourself unless you are absolutely sure that you know what you are doing. FrontPage relies on these files to correctly open and display your Web site.

Why Use Subsites

The top-level Web site on the Web server is called the root Web site. All Web sites created under the root Web site are known as subsites. (Subsites were known as subwebs in previous versions of FrontPage.) There are many reasons to separate specific Web site content into its own subsite.

Some FrontPage features are designed to be applied to a Web site only and not to individual pages. If you want different settings for these features on some pages, those pages must exist in a separate Web site. You might also want to restrict access to certain pages so that only specific people can access them. In order to do that, you must separate those pages into their own Web site so that you can apply the appropriate permissions to that Web site.