Introduction

Introduction

So far, you examined many of the key features available for webmasters in Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003. Using FrontPage, you can easily add Web functionality to give your Web site a professional look with minimal effort and no programming expertise. You will be working with what FrontPage calls Web Components—Hit Counters, Page Banners, and other key components. Using FrontPage, you can place these components directly on your Web page through the Insert menu.

You can insert a scheduled image—a graphic element that may or may not be on screen at any given time. You can also add a timestamp to your site to let your visitors know when the last time the site was revised. Keeping your site current will bring back visitors; also, by adding a discussion group, you are sure to increase activity on your Web site as visitors come back for more information.

If you have data in a Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet, chart, or PivotTable, you can insert it into a Web page. When you insert Excel data into a Web page, visitors to your site can view and interact with the data online without having to install the Office Excel program on their computer. The Excel Web component includes a toolbar with sorting and data analysis tools. FrontPage allows you to include information from MSN and MSNBC on your Web site. You can insert maps, Web searches, and stock quotes from MSN and headline news from MSNBC.

Other navigational tools such as, a search form so that you can search your site, a navigation bar to guide your visitors through your site, and a Table of Contents to let your visitors go to a specific page or topic are all tools that are essential for a successful Web site. When you publish your Web site with some Web Components, such as hit counters, the site needs to include FrontPage Server Extensions; see Chapter 12, "Publishing and Managing a Web Site," for more details.