There are many instances that arise where a FrontPage user would like to create a website without utilizing the powerful FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE). Users do this when creating a website on their hard drive to upload to the system at a later date. Other reasons could be a lack of support from the server or the server is not available during the website development process.

Luckily, this task can easily be accomplished and the use of the excellent development features will still be functional. Unfortunately, some of the server-side features will be affected. These include:

• Hit counters
• Search functions
• Form to e-mail

FPSE’s are various small programs that are created to work alongside a web server in conjunction with FrontPage’s powerful software. Many of the extensions are installed during the FrontPage installation process without the user ever knowing. There are customization options so the user can remove those extensions they don’t wish to have.

There are a few primary tips to consider when using FrontPage without the extensions. These include:

• FPSE’s make publishing easier
• There may be limits
• Use the “Preview in Browser” feature
• Utilize FrontPage’s publishing feature

The first thing to remember is that FPSE’s were developed to make creating, publishing and maintaining a website a much easier task. By not including the extensions, you may be losing out on valuable services. There are plenty of web hosting providers that offer a package that includes FrontPage extension support for a reasonable price.

Also, those web servers that do not support FPSE’s may also have a few other limits that can affect your website. This is a good question to ask before signing up with a new hosting provider. Plan your website around their response as it can be frustrating to have an incompatible website.

Another important tip is to use the “Preview in Browser” feature found in all FrontPage software variants. This is a useful method for detecting compatibility problems. If the site appears as it should, then it will work on most servers. Finally, FrontPage’s publishing feature is extremely powerful. It can handle any type of technique used to develop the website.

There are many resources available with FrontPage support. Taking consideration on these four important points will help to decrease compatibility issues while still allowing you to publish a high quality website without FrontPage server extensions.

FrontPage hosting is another feature offered by web hosting providers to lure new customers to their services. Although FrontPage hosting isn’t exactly a hosting type per se, it simply indicates that the provider is compatible with websites built with FrontPage software.

FrontPage software has many features and applications that are unique to the program which can cause compatibility issues on hosting providers that do not offer FrontPage hosting. Many hosts simply have a checkbox or button to select “FrontPage enabled.” This installs specific extensions on the servers to enable compatibility.

FrontPage Features

FrontPage has several features that enable the software to be easy to use as well as web compatible. The first feature is the FrontPage editor which utilizes a graphical user interface (GUI) to generate a “WYSIWYG” (what you see is what you get) environment. This basically means that as the user creates and manipulates, the changes appear immediately in a display window similar to a web page. This occurs because the HTML code is built automatically.

Another feature that maximizes ease is the FrontPage explorer which provides a way for users to instantly test the site they’ve just created. They are able to click links, web pages, and other modules found on a regular web site.

A third feature provided by the software that can only be run on FrontPage web hosts is web bots. These are CGI scripts that provide the ability to add discussion groups, forms and form handlers, counters, full text searches and link bars. This is a nice feature as the user doesn’t have to do any programming; it’s completed by the software.

FrontPage Server Extensions

FrontPage server extensions accomplish many tasks related to server-side applications. These extensions allow users to:

• Include discussion webs on their site
• Collaborate on the same web  server
• Include hit counters on their site
• Provide full text searches
• Add and manage forms on their website
• Write to the web server from a remote location

Once again, these are nice features of FrontPage software as the users don’t have to program any of these applications. FrontPage hosting providers would provide compatibility with the web server and these types of extensions.

FrontPage is an excellent program to build, expand and maintain websites. Since there’s little code involved and a nice GUI, it makes creating easy for all levels. If you plan on using FrontPage and are shopping for a hosting provider, ensure that they offer FrontPage hosting and the extensions that accompany the package.

Once a web site has been established and is ready to roll, an important piece of software that might make the road to success a bit easier is a good control panel.  Control panels allow web site owners the ability to administer their accounts via a web interface.  Of the many programs available, DirectAdmin is one control panel that is easy to use, stable and is competitively priced.

User Features

On the user end of things, DirectAdmin has a number of helpful features that make administering a web site a thing of ease.  Five different menus are presented – e-mail, ftp, dns, statistics, and sub-domains.  FrontPage extensions can be easily enabled or disabled by clicking a button.  Instead of using ftp, users can opt to use the built in file manager to upload files and create new directories.  DirectAdmin also has an advanced tools section where users can install SSL certificates, view server information and even enable site redirection and domain pointers.

Reseller Features

For resellers, DirectAdmin is an administrative gift.  New hosting accounts can be created instantly and current accounts can be modified or deleted as needed.  Predefined account packages can be created allowing even quicker account creation.  The built in ticket support system is designed to allow resellers to contact all resold account owners in case of system wide messages.  IPs can be allocated and name servers can be personalized.  All in all, DirectAdmin works well for resellers.

Administrator Features

Server administrators benefit greatly from DirectAdmin as well.  Resellers and admin accounts can be created quickly, predefined reseller packages can be set up, and IPs can be easily allocated all within the administrator’s portion of the DirectAdmin program.  Every aspect of server administration is controlled through the control panel making the life of an administrator just a bit less hectic.

Overall Features

DirectAdmin comes bundled with a ticket support system.  When logging into the system, administrators and support staff will be greeted with how many messages are waiting to be attended to.  The ticket support system can be configured to send e-mail notifications when a ticket has been created.  DirectAdmin is set to update live which means no more having to manually download and install new versions of software.  A quick click on the “licensing/updates” button performs the update without hassle.  The control panel program is also completely customizable allowing web hosting providers to make their “premier” control panel unique and part of their web site theme.

Cost

Pricing for DirectAdmin is split into several options.  For $29 each month, web hosting providers can opt for a monthly license.  To save a bit of money, providers can go with the yearly option offered at $200 per year.  The most economical over time is the “Lifetime License.”  For a one-time fee of $299.00, web hosts can outright own their own copy of the control panel software.  This last option also comes with 90 days of technical support.

Final Thoughts

Administrating a web site, reseller site or an entire server should not be a chore.  DirectAdmin is one control panel that takes the hard work out of being a web site owner and makes it fun again.

FrontPage 2002 showed designers that tables could not only be used to present tabular data, but also create page layouts.  After you get them down to a science, you will find that tables can help you design a pretty nice looking website with relative ease.  If you have a FrontPage hosting package, this is a great way to organize your site and thus, make it easier for visitors to navigate.

Why Use Tables for a Layout?

Using tables for layouts may be a hard concept to grasp, especially if you have never worked with them before in Access, Excel, Word or other applications.  In fact, it took some rather creative web designers to learn that you could place data into these spreadsheet-like fields along with text and graphics to create professional looking web pages.  The nice thing about designing with tables is that the information is organized in a way that enables it to be easily imported into your other documents or pages.  FrontPage can also use tables to produce dynamic templates which could save you a lot of time when creating new pages.

Creating Your Table

The easiest way to create tables in FrontPage is to select “Table” from the “Insert” menu.    You also have the option to import a table or draw one of your own.  Choose the page where you want the table inserted and it will show up. When setting up a table, FrontPage will ask questions about what type of table you want to actually create.  The main options you have are the number of columns and rows.  These cells are very useful as you can fill them descriptive text, your logo image, links to other pages and more.  It will probably take you a little time to get a hang of the cell structure, but all you really need to do is figure how many rows and columns you need for your table.  Remember, this isn’t a spreadsheet, so every cell doesn’t have to be filled.  Just think about how you want the layout to look and creating your table should be much easier.

Customizing Your Table

After getting your columns and rows together, FrontPage gives you other options to choose colors and borders for the table.  At this point, you can select the properties of each individual cell to create a more appealing look for your table.  Once you save the table, you can then add text, graphics or even tables within those cells.  This will take some experimenting but after a while, you are sure to get the hang of it and likely never rely on the task pane to design your page layouts again.

Conclusion

Using tables to create page layouts is just one of many tricks that can be performed when hosting with FrontPage 2002.  Aside from a low cost hosting solution, you can easily create a well organized, highly functional, professional website that looks just as good, if not better than the competition’s.

Automation is everything in the web hosting arena.  Without it, many of the same tasks that have become simple would revert to being tedious.  Even the most skilled administrators dread dealing with the raw aspects of a web server and operating system.  These are some of the factors that have led to the advent of administrative tools like Plesk.   The Plesk software makes a popular control panel choice for web hosting providers and end-users in shared, virtual or dedicated server environments.  Compatible with both Windows and Linux platforms, it provides all the tools needed to control a complicated web server or simple website.  It is also highly regarded as the most stable and reliable control panel on the market.  This article will give you an introduction on Plesk and overview some of its capabilities.

Plesk Features

The Plesk control panel aims to the simplify various administrative processes.  It lets you create and manage domains, install SSL certificates and even access the built-in site builder for putting your website together.  You can perform a number of simple tasks such as setting up email accounts, webmail and autoresponders as well as more advanced functions like billing customers and blocking spam with greylisting.  In addition, Plesk gives you the ability to manage files through a web-based file manager or by means of a FrontPage administrative panel.  Whether its viewing a website’s bandwidth usage or managing customer accounts, it can all be done within the confinement of this extremely capable control panel.  Plesk offers tremendous power, able to reduce operating costs and resource usage by automating a variety of tasks.

Control Levels

Plesk offers four levels of login, each with their own responsibilities and privileges.  These levels include:

Administrator – The highest level, this login allows the administrator control virtually every component of the system.  Once logged in at this level, you can centrally manage multiple servers be it an HTTP web server like Apache or a database server like MySQL.

Client – The client level login allows resellers to obtain creation rights from the system administrator.

Domain – The third level login is designed for the website owner or end user.  These permissions are what provides a user the ability to manage their hosting account.

Mail User – The fourth level login is designated for individual mail accounts.  Here, users can login and maintain their email accounts, change passwords, configure spam filters, change virus settings and more.

Plesk is One of the Best

Though it extends benefits to the end-user, the Plesk control panel was designed with professional web hosting providers and experienced system administrators in mind.  It enables companies to be very successful by providing the ability to maintain thousands of accounts per server with a high level of performance and better security than most competing control panels.  The software comes bundled with a variety of tools and even includes an application installer that allows end-users to incorporate blogs, bulletin boards and other types of program.  Plesk delivers the seamless automation needed to enrich and simplify the technically challenging hosting operation.