We have a newsletter that was created in MS Word. We would like to put it into a web page. But everything we try results in a page that looks nothing like our newsletter. How can we make a web page look like our newsletter?
One way to recreate documents with complicated layouts is to convert them to Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. It is fast, easy and the final docs look exactly like the original no matter what kind of browser / operating system the user has. There are two drawbacks: first, the user has to have the free Acrobat reader installed -- this is not a big problem as 90% or better have it and if they don't it's easy enough to download and install. Second, you must have the full version (not the free reader) of Adobe Acrobat to create PDF's. (Approximate cost is $150 for educational use.) Once Acrobat is installed, it works like a printer; you simply "print" from any program that supports printing to Acrobat. If you do decide to post files to your website in Acrobat format (in other words, as PDF files), we recommend you place a notation next to each file with something like the following:
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
Link the phrase "Adobe Acrobat Reader" to this page: http://www.fcps.net/downloads/acrobat.htm or a similar one of your own making.
Please note: If you don't have Adobe Acrobat pdf writer and can't afford to purchase it, CutePDF Writer is available to download at http://www.cutepdf.com and is free for educational use.
When I type in our URL in a web browser, I get "Directory Listing Denied." Why is that?
Your home page needs to be named either default.htm or index.htm for your URL to work. If there is no page by that name in the root directory, users will get a "Directory Listing Denied" error when accessing your URL. If you named your home page something else, rename it in FrontPage.
How do I make it so a web page does not get cached in the users browser?
Caching is what happens the a user's browser keeps a copy of a web page on the user's hard drive to make it load faster the next time it is viewed. If the user's cache settings are not correct, this cached copy of your page may never get refreshed, so all your updates never get seen! One way to avoid this (besides educating your staff about browser cache settings) is to insert two meta tags in your page that tell the browser to never cache that page. Do not do this for all your pages -- only those that change frequently, especially your home page. Here is the procedure:
Although there is a convoluted way to insert meta tags using dialog boxes in normal view, it is much simpler and quicker to simply switch to HTML view and paste the code in. With the page you wish to edit open, click on the 'HTML' tab at the bottom of the FrontPage window. You will see a page full of code; this is the actual source code that the browser interprets to render a web page. Don't be intimidated by it; the basics of HTML coding are really not all that complicated. Locate the <head> tag near the top of the page. You should also see another head tag, with a slash in front of it, like this: </head>. Everything between those two tags is contained in the "head" section of your page. This is where our meta tags go.
Okay, start a new blank line anywhere in the head section by placing your cursor at the end of any line between <head> and </head> (not after </head>!) and press enter. Now copy and paste the following two lines into your page at that point:
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="Tue, 04 Dec 1993 21:29:02 GMT">
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache">After you save your page, most browsers will then not cache the page and your users will always see the most recent version.
How do I insert a description and keywords in my web page for search engines to use when indexing my site?
Like the issue above, this is done with meta tags. (Read the question above about caching if you haven't done so already.) In this case, you need two meta tags, one named "keywords" and the other named "description." The syntax is only slightly different than in the example above. Here is an example:
<META name="Description" content="Located in Lexington, Kentucky, this K12 school district is home to 53 schools, over 30,000 students, and nearly 5,000 employees.">
<META name="Keywords" content="Fayette, Lexington, Kentucky, Education, K12, District, Board of Education">
I created some pages in Microsoft Word. I transferred the files to Front Page and when I went to one of the pages, it opened the page in Word instead of FrontPage! I want to edit it in FrontPage.
FrontPage is part of the Microsoft Office family and like its siblings, it likes to work and play as a family. What you are describing also happens with web pages created by other Office applications, such as Excel. In Microsoft terminology, we say that the files are associated with the Office application that created them; hence, that application will be used to edit the file later. Unfortunately, that's not always what we want to happen!
The best way to include information from a Word doc is to let FrontPage convert the doc to html. Directions for how to insert a Word file into FrontPage are located at http://teach.fcps.net/trt1/fpg03-directions.htm#Word_File