FrontPage 2003 and Web Site Management: An Overview

FrontPage doesn't think in terms of pages; it thinks in terms of entire Web sites. That is what makes the product so powerful and moves it from a simple maker of Web pages to the site management system that it is. Because of the product's focus on site management and design, FrontPage opens a site and is then capable of maintaining and modifying elements on a site-wide basis.

Many in Web development will build their site on their hard drive and publish directly to a live server. This is a simple process that is described carefully in the next chapter. Others will need to remotely access a development site along with other team members and on a regular basis publish site content to a live server. Others will find that at times they need to work directly on a live Web site.

In this chapter, we'll examine the process of opening and working with existing Web sites (both on the desktop and on the remote server). Direct connections to servers through FrontPage Extensions will be compared with other options made available with the most recent release of FrontPage. We'll also take a short look at the role of subsites in the development (and publishing) process and how those are handled.

There will be times when a developer will be working with a local site that publishes to a Microsoft Server installed with FrontPage Extensions. There will be times when a developer finds themselves the only Microsoft user in an entire development team. Because FrontPage supports multiple design and publishing protocols and approaches, FrontPage works well in both environments.

In addition to the traditional Web design and site management features previously associated with the product, FrontPage 2003 is now also a powerful product for connecting to, presenting, and editing data from numerous data sources through Windows SharePoint Services. Unlike the other models described here, this approach requires a remote updating and editing process to capture the power of these two tools working in conjunction with each other.

For more on publishing a FrontPage Web site, see "Publishing a FrontPage Web Site," p. 299.

For more on FrontPage and SharePoint Team Services, see "SharePoint Team Services 2.0," p. 943.