Indiana University

IU Webmaster

Using FrontPage without Server Extensions on IU's central Web servers

Table of Contents

Introduction

This document assumes you are using FrontPage 2000 or 2002/XP for Windows. If you are using an earlier version of FrontPage for Windows, we strongly recommend that you upgrade to the latest version. We do not recommend using FrontPage for Macintosh: the latest version is several years old and Microsoft has discontinued further development and support of the product.

Return to Top of Page

FrontPage components that you can't use

There are several "browse time" components of FrontPage that should not be used if your pages are on a Web server that does not have FrontPage server extensions. If you are using FrontPage to develop web pages on a server or account that does not have FrontPage Server Extensions enabled, you should not use the following components:
Confirmation Field
Discussion Form Handler
Registration Form Handler
Save Results Form Handler
Search Form
Hit Counter
Database access
Some Link bar options (2002 client only)
Top 10 List (2002 client only)
List View (2002 client only)
Document Library View (2002 client only)

Two other components have limited functionality without FrontPage extensions:

Scheduled Image (called "Picture Based on Schedule" in 2002 client)
Scheduled Include Page component (called "Page Based on Schedule" in 2002 client)

You can disable these features in FrontPage: go to Tools, Page Options and click on the Compatibility Tab. Uncheck the box next to "Enabled with FrontPage Server Extensions." Features that require FrontPage Server Extensions are now disabled.

Return to Top of Page

Alternatives to using Server Extensions

Many of the FrontPage browse time components listed above deal with forms. Transform, a form handling program, can implement many of these features on www.indiana.edu, www.iun.edu, www.iuk.edu, and www.iupui.edu. If you plan to use forms on your Web site without FrontPage Server Extensions, you will want to take advantage of Transform. For more information on Transform, see the Web Form with Transform 3.0: the Users' Guide documentation on the Webmaster's Tools and Guides page.

Here are alternatives for the FrontPage components listed in "FrontPage components that you can't use," above:

Confirmation Field
After a user submits a simple form, they are generally directed to a confirmation page. FrontPage uses Confirmation Fields to generate the variable data on its confirmation pages.

To generate a Confirmation page with Transform:

  1. Create a Transform template
  2. Create a success-response section for your template
  3. Create a confirmation page in HTML within that section
  4. Use the form field names (e.g., [username] [address]) inside brackets to include variable data.
  5. Point your form to the template file

If you want to give the users an opportunity to change their data

  1. Generate a form as the confirmation page
  2. Use the VALUE field attribute to pre-set the data inside [ ]
  3. Use a second transform template to store the data upon submission

Save Results Form Handler
Generally the purpose of a form is to collect data. The two most common ways to process this data are to append it to a data file or to send it as an e-mail message. Transform, like FrontPage, allows both.

To create a Save-Results form handler in Transform:

  1. Create a Transform template with a confirmation page
  2. Add an e-mail response section and/or
  3. Add an append -response section
  4. Set the !append-file-name variable
  5. Set the !append-after / !append-before variable (optional)
  6. Insert the [data] and text you would like added to the file

Registration Form Handler
The FrontPage registration form handler is used to gather information from the users and is often used to grant registered users access to certain files.

Although this is possible to do with the tools on the IU systems, we ask you to please not automate the modification of your .htaccess files because of the security holes this would create in your account. Instead, we encourage you to implement a "Save-Results" form handler to gather data from your users and modify your access files manually.

Search Form
The FrontPage search form allows your users to search your entire Web site for keywords. This component can be implemented with the IU Search function. For more information on the Search function, please see IU Search Engine.

Discussion Form Handler
The Front Page Discussion form handler allows users to submit comments to an Internet discussion, much like a Bulletin Board Service or a newsgroup. The Bulletin Board Manager is a similar service that is offered on IU's central Web servers. For information on creating and maintaining a Web bulletin board on your www.indiana.edu, www.iun.edu, www.iuk.edu, and www.iupui.edu account, see the Webmaster's Web Bulletin Boards document.

Hit Counter
 The FrontPage Hit Counter displays a running count of the number of times a particular page has been viewed. A similar hit counter utility is available on the central Web server.

Database Access
FrontPage provides tools to build pages that retrieve data from database servers. These tools generate Active Server Pages (ASP), a scripting technology native to Microsoft web servers and not currently available on IU's web servers. If you wish to program this kind of functionality yourself, the scripting language PHP supports database connectivity and is available on www.indiana.edu, www.iun.edu, www.iuk.edu, and www.iupui.edu.

If you need an enterprise-level web database service compatible with FrontPage, the Data Management Support unit of UITS provides a web database service on servers running Microsoft's SQL data server, IIS, and Windows 2000. This is a charge-back service. For more information, see the DMS document on the WWW Database Service at Indiana University.

Scheduled Include and Scheduled Image
These components let you put expiration dates on text and images. They work within the FrontPage client, but without server extensions they will not automatically update your pages on the server. To use these components on the central Web servers, you must open your web in FrontPage, recalculate hyperlinks, and publish the web for changes to take effect. Currently there is no easy way to automate this function on the central Web servers without writing a CGI application. If you are familiar with Java or Javascript, you may want to attempt this with a client-side script.

Return to Top of Page

Publishing to the central Web servers

For security reasons, FTP connections to Veritas and Champion are not available. You cannot use FrontPage to upload web files to your Veritas/Champion account.

Save your files to a directory on your hard drive, and then use an SFTP client to transfer your files to the server.

For information on how to save your files (set up a new web folder) to a directory on your hard drive for FrontPage, please see this KB article at http://kb.iu.edu/data/akrd.html.

For information on how to use SSH Secure Shell Client, please see Secure Shell (SSH).

Other Possible Incompatibilities

FrontPage documentation also suggests that there may be other incompatibilities between FrontPage and some servers. Below is a list of possible incompatibilities with solutions to make your FrontPage-generated Web site compatible with www.indiana.edu, www.iun.edu, www.iuk.edu, and www.iupui.edu.

Access Control
FrontPage can provide its own access control options if FrontPage Server Extensions are available. For servers or accounts without Server Extensions, you'll need to use .htaccess files to restrict access to your pages. You must log into your account using an ssh client to modify .htaccess files: you cannot use FrontPage to modify or upload them. For more information on .htaccess files, see the Webmaster's Controlling Web Page Access document.

Default Page
Different Web servers use different pages as their default directory index page. FrontPage uses index.htm as the default page for disk-based webs. This is compatible with the IU central Web servers, which recognize any of four default files: index.html, index.htm, home.html, and home.htm.

If you develop your web using a Microsoft IIS web server, the default page name will usually be Default.htm. This page name will not be recognized as a default page by IU's central web servers, so be sure to organize your Web site using one of the page names listed above as its home page so that it works properly when published on the IU central Web servers.

If you encounter any other compatibility problems between FrontPage and www.indiana.edu, www.iun.edu, www.iuk.edu, and www.iupui.edu, please contact IU Webmaster.

Return to Top of Page