Understanding Subwebs 

FrontPage has supported subwebs since the first version. FrontPage 2000 introduced the concept of nested subwebs. By utilizing the power of subwebs in FrontPage, the site administrator / webmaster can streamline work and effectively delegate parts of the site to others. Before delving into setting up and managing subwebs, let's start with the basics and define what me mean by subwebs and nested subwebs.

Crucial is understanding the difference between a folder and a subweb. If you open a web that contains both folders and subwebs, you can see the way the two are represented.

Folders are used pretty much the same way in webs as they are on your hard drive. They are simply to make organizing your files easier. For example, most webmasters find it handy to put all image files together in an images folder. This is why FrontPage automatically creates an images folder when you create a new web. When you place web content in folders, the URL (web address) of that content includes the folder name. For example, if your root web is named www.yourschool.fcps.net and you have a page named whatsnew.htm in a folder named content, then the URL of that page will be www.yourschool.fcps.net/content/whatsnew.htm. Folders can be nested within each other, with no limit to the depth of nesting. That's why you sometimes see very long URLs with lots of slashes on the web!

Subwebs are like very specialized folders. From the viewpoint of the user, they are just like regular folders and the URL of content in subwebs works just like content in folders. But from the viewpoint of the FrontPage webmaster, subwebs have some very special qualities.

Perhaps the most important quality of subwebs is that they can have security settings that are independent of the parent web. This means that a school webmaster can authorize granting authoring rights to another staff member for a subweb without allowing the staff member rights to other parts of the school web. Other aspects that remain separate among subwebs include shared borders and themes. Again, this allows authors of subwebs the freedom to set these properties independently of the parent web.

There is really no difference between a nested subweb and a subweb — except that nested subwebs are contained within other subwebs. Your school website consists of at least one web — the root web. The root web is always www.yourschool.fcps.net.