Web Publishing with MS FrontPage Express

Original text by: JQ Johnson jqj@darkwing.uoregon.edu
Modified & Extended by : Can Ugur Ayfer cayfer@bilkent.edu.tr

Outline

WEB Publishing and MS FrontPage Express
Tools You Will Need to Publish WEB Pages
Download and Install Instructions for the Tools
Publishing your WWW pages on Bilkent Web server
If you do not have PKUNZIP on your computer
To "WEB Publishing with Frontpage Express" pages
To "WS_FTP Info" pages

WEB Publishing and MS FrontPage Express

Publishing information on the WEB for public access is becoming more and more important. The process of Web publishing is quite easy but not very trivial because a special coding standard is used to format the text. This standard is called HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). The special HTML codes ("tags" to be precise) can be selected out of a rich collection and usually turns the original text to a mess after these tags are inserted.

Various tools, usually called HTML Editors, have been developed to ease the process of HTML coding; some of which are available freely. One such good product (good in the sense that it is very easy to use, small, doesn't require much computer resources) is Microsoft's Frontpage Express.

These Web pages are prepared to assist those users who intend to publish information on the World Wide Web but have never done it before. The information on these pages is not an HTML tutorial or course; we just present the main software tools one will need. Please also note that one does not have to into the details of HTML coding to build attractive and comprehensive Web pages. Frontpage Express is more powerful than most Web publishers will ever need.

Tools You Will Need to Publish WEB Pages

An HTML EDITOR MS Frontpage Express will be quite sufficient; especially for beginners.
FP Express is a free software, which is distributed as a part of Internet Explorer 4.01. Those who do not have FP Express already installed on their PC's can download the program here. Please note that FP Express requires WÝndows95 or Windows98. Any PC capable of running Win95 will work fine.
An Image Editor If you will need to put images on your Web pages (most probably you will), we recommend you to download another free and popular image editor (LViewPro). Please note that you will have to learn a lot about this program before you start creating fancy graphics.
A Program to Transfer the Files You Create to the WEB Server Since you will be using a PC while building your Web pages, you will need a tool to transfer your work to a Bilkent UNIX host, through which your pages will be made available on the Internet. The simplest way to make these sorts of transfers is using FTP (File Transfer Protocol). A Windows application, WS_FTP is a popular FTP Client which will help you in transferring files to-and-from UNIX hosts.
A Sample/Template homepage suggested to faculty You can view the sample homepage (actually, the template homepage) by clicking here. Please note that the contents of the page are for demonstration purposes only.

Download and Install Instructions for the Tools

You can download these programs to your local disk using the following links.

Note : You will need to use a program called PKUNZIP to install the files that you download. If you do not have PKUNZIP available on your PC, please see the notes at the bottom of this page.

Tool

Download Instructions

Install Instructions

Frontpage Express

The HTML Editor
  1. Click here to dnload the zipped (packed) file,
  2. Point to a temporary directory on your disk when prompted,
  3. Click OK and wait till the download is complete,
  4. Follow the Install Instructions on the right.
  5. If your FrontPage Express complains about some missing DLL files when you first run it, download the following files into your Windows directory:

WININET.DLL
URLMON.DLL
SHLWAPI.DLL
MFC40.DLL
MSVCRT40.DLL
MSVCIRT.DLL

For further reading on HTML coding:study and practice,

  1. Create a folder called FPEXPRS on your C: drive's root
  2. Open up an MSDOS window
  3. UNZIP the downloaded file using the following DOS commands:

    CD C:\FPEXPRS
    PKUNZIP -D C:\TEMP\FPEXP.ZIP

  4. Close the MSDOS window;
  5. Using "MyComputer" or Explorer; locate the "FPEXPRS" directory; then the "BIN" directory underneath; then the "fpxpress.exe" file. The exe file has an icon which looks like.
  6. Create a ShortCut to this exe file (right mouse click on the icon; then select "Create Shortcut") and drag the new shorcut to your desktop.
  7. Have a look at some notes on Frontpage Express.
LViewPro

The Image Editor

  1. Click here to dnload the zipped (packed) file, to a temporary location on your hard drive (eg. C:\TEMP),

  2. Follow the Install Instructions on the right.

  1. Create a folder called LVIEW on your C: drive,

  2. Open up an MSDOS window

  3. UNZIP the downloaded file using the following DOS commands:

    CD C:\LVIEW
    PKUNZIP C:\TEMP\LVIEWPRO.ZIP

  4. Close the MSDOS window;

  5. Using "MyComputer" or Explorer; locate the "LVIEW" directory; then the "Lviewpro.exe" file. The exe file has an icon which looks like.

  6. Create a ShortCut to this exe file (right mouse click on the icon; then select "Create Shortcut") and drag the new shorcut to your desktop.

WS_FTP

The FTP Client

  1. Click here to dnload the zipped (packed) file, to a temporary location on your hard drive (eg. C:\TEMP),

  2. Follow the Install Instructions on the right.

See WSFTP-Info pages for installation and some "How To" notes.

Publishing your WWW pages on Bilkent Web server

For most people at BU, publishing a web page means placing the .html file and associated images in a subdirectory, named public_html, in your home directory located on the server(s). Please note that the "public_html" directory MUST be located right under your home directory and named exactly as it reads in this text. Please note the underscore character ( _ ) between the words public & html which in turn should be all in lowercase.

We suggest that you use the WS_FTP application program to upload the HTML files that you have created on your desktop computer using FrontPage Express. If you need the program itself and/or assistance in installing/using the program, please click here for WS_FTP information.

BEFORE transferring your HTML files to your home directory on one of the Bilkent UNIX hosts, you should create the public_html directory under your home directory and check/set a few access rights to the directory structures in your home.

To create the public_html directory;

1. logon to your favorite UNIX host,
2. issue the "mkdir ~/public_html" command, (please note that everything you type should be in lowercase)
3. issue the "chmod 755 ~/public_html" command. (please note that everything you type should be in lowercase)

4.

 issue the "chmod 755 ~" command (please note that everything you type should be in lowercase) to render your home directory readable to your web guests.

5.

 Please note that the command you have given in step 4 will render other directories in your home directory readable to other users. If you do not want other people to have read access to these other directories, you MUST explicitly make them inaccessible to others. You can use the UNIX chmod command to make any sub directories under your home directory inaccessible to others. eg.:

chmod 700 myfiles documents thesis

will block others' read access to the directories named "myfiles", "documents", "thesis"

6.

 Issue the command "chmod 711 ~" so that the web server software can cas a limited access to your home directory.

Now go back to your PC and transfer your HTML files to this new public_html directory (you can use the WS_FTP program on your PC to do this).

If necessary, rename the file which corresponds to your main web page to "index.html". You can use either the WS_FTP program or the "mv ~/public_html/somename.html ~/public_html/index.html" UNIX command (you should type the command at the telnet window that you used to login to your host).

NOW YOU AND YOUR CYBER VISITORS CAN SEE WHAT YOU HAVE TO TELL THEM ON THE WEB, USING THE FOLLOWING URL (Universal Resourse Locator; or simply "LINK") :

http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~userid

Please note that the word userid should be replaced with your user id, which is in fact the name part of your e-mail address.

If you do not have PKUNZIP on your computer:

You will need the PKUNZIP utility to unpack the packed software. You can also download the PKUNZIP utility by clicking here. Please note that settings of some browsers will not let you download the program successfully due to its .EXE extension. If you have such a problem, please download this copy with a pseudo ZIP extension; and rename the PKUNZIP.ZIP file to PKUNZIP.EXE after the download is completed. We recommend that you download the PKUNZIP utility to the C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND directory on your PC.

To "WEB Publishing with Frontpage Express" pages
To "WS_FTP Info" pages