Supporting FrontPage on Your Web Server

Supporting FrontPage on Your Web Server

A Web site resides on a Web server, a computer dedicated to making Web pages available to people who want to visit the site. FrontPage supports three different types of Web servers: non-extended, extended, and Windows SharePoint Services.

A non-extended Web server is a generic Web server that uses Internet File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV), or Windows file system to transfer FrontPage files for delivery over the Web. A non-extended Web server doesn't use FrontPage server software (FrontPage Server Extensions), which prevents you from using extended functionality in FrontPage to use hit counters, e-mail Web results, and collect information from a database.

An extended Web server is a generic Web server that uses FrontPage Server Extensions. The server extensions allow you to add hit counters, e-mail Web results, and collect information from a database using Active Server Pages (ASP) or Microsoft ASP.NET. FrontPage 2003 doesn't comes with a new version of FrontPage Server Extensions. Instead, you can use FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions, which are compatible and available from Microsoft's MSDN Web site, or Windows SharePoint Services.

Windows SharePoint Services is an engine that enables you to create Web sites to share information. SharePoint sites provide communities for team collaboration, enabling users to work together on documents, tasks, and projects. Windows SharePoint Services is part of Windows .NET Server 2003. To install Windows SharePoint Services, you need to install Windows .NET Server 2003 first; see Chapter 13, "Working Together on a SharePoint Team Site," for more details.

When you install FrontPage, you don't need to know what type of Web server you'll use to deliver your Web site, but you'll need to know it when you start creating Web pages, so you can take advantage of the FrontPage features provided by the Web server and avoid the ones it doesn't support.

You can customize FrontPage to enable the features you want and disable the ones you don't by using the Page Option dialog box. To enable FrontPage Server Extensions or SharePoint Services, simply click the Tools menu, click Page Options, click the Authoring tab, click the FrontPage And SharePoint Technologies list arrow, select the option you want to use, select the Browse-time Web Components check box or select the SharePoint Services check, and then click OK.