WebCom -- FrontPage FAQs

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Troubleshooting: Tips and Frequently Asked Questions

FrontPage Tips

The advantage of using FrontPage for creating and publishing your site is the ease with which such tasks can be done. However, as with any program, there are commonly made mistakes to watch out for. Here are some simple tips that can help you prevent the most common snags when using Microsoft FrontPage.

Make sure that you have an Internet connection when you attempt to publish your site. If you do not have an Internet connection established, FrontPage will invoke the Microsoft Publishing Wizard or possibly report other errors. If this happens, cancel the publishing procedure, establish an Internet connection, and try again.

(FrontPage 97 and 98) Do not attempt to use the Microsoft Publishing Wizard to publish your site. It is surprisingly difficult to use, and can potentially cause problems with your FrontPage web. Instead, publish through the FrontPage Explorer which is easier to use in comparison.

Do not use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to publish your site. FrontPage expects that webs will be published through the FrontPage program. If you use FTP, components of your web (webbots in particular) may not function properly.

When publishing your pages, list your domain in lower-case letters and with the "www." prefix, such as: www.your-company-here.com Normally domain names are not case-sensitive, but using upper-case letters when publishing may not work properly.

If you have installed AOL (American OnLine) software after installing FrontPage, FrontPage may not function properly, automatically invoking the Microsoft Publishing Wizard when you attempt to publish, or possibly reporting other errors. If you experience this, you will need to reinstall the FrontPage Personal Web Server.

Instead of using the FrontPage hit counter, we recommend using the WebCom Graphical Hit Counter which provides all the functionality the the FrontPage counter provides, and is much more efficient, and therefore quicker to load.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does WebCom support FrontPage 2000 extensions?

WebCom now uses the FrontPage 2000 extensions. You should still be able to use all the publishing and site management capabilities of both FrontPage 97 and FrontPage 98. Webcom also supports all of the standard FrontPage "webbots". with the single exception of the FrontPage counter utility. Due to the amount of system resources that the FrontPage counter consumes, and the fact that it is redundant with our own utilities, Webcom has chosen not to support this webbot. If you would like to have a counter on your web site, you can use Webcom's Graphical Access Counter. For information about using FrontPage with your WebCom account, please see our FrontPage documentation.

I am using FrontPage and older version of FrontPage. What do I need to do to start using FrontPage 2000?

In order to best describe this process, we have a separate page about upgrading from to FrontPage 2000.

When I try to publish, why do I get the FrontPage Publishing Wizard?

This generally indicates that your attempt to publish your site through the FrontPage Explorer has failed. This can happen for several reasons.

Not connected to the Internet: Make sure that you have an active connection to Internet through your ISP and try again.
Domain name is not yet active: It can take a few days for a domain to be registered or for a domain to be moved to Webcom. Before attempting to publish your FrontPage web, be sure that your domain is active. (See next question.)
Other Problems: Sometimes problems can arise that cause FrontPage be unable to recognize that you have a connection to the Internet that it can use to publish your files through the FrontPage Explorer. For example, if you install America OnLine software after installing FrontPage, FrontPage will not publish correctly because of changes that AOL has made to the configuration of your Internet software. To solve this problem, and other similar problems where the FrontPage Publishing Wizard is automatically invoked for not apparent reason, try reinstalling the FrontPage Personal Web Server.

When can I publish? Is my domain active?

You can publish your site when your domain is registered or moved to Webcom, and is active on our server. This normally takes less than a week to happen. If you would like to know the status of your domain name registration, you can find this out by logging into your account from the Customer Services link on our homepage, going to Domain Name Services, and selecting to view the status of your domain name registration. To see if your domain name is active, try using it by entering your domain name in your web browser.

What are all these directories doing in my account?

When you enable Microsoft Frontpage extensions for your Domain name, several directories and new files are created in your WebCom directory . Please do not edit, delete, move, or rename any of these files or directories. Doing so will probably cause FrontPage to not work correctly with your domain. To remove these files and directories from your account, simply deactivate FrontPage for your domain.

Any directory beginning with "_vti" contains important files which are needed to utilize Microsoft Frontpage with your Domain name. In addition there is a file named _vti_cnf.html located in the directory your domain is configured to use. When you uncheck the Enable for use with Microsoft Frontpage box, the files and directories associated with Microsoft FrontPage are removed from your account. In addition, there is one directory called _private that is created for you. This directory is a place where Microsoft FrontPage stores your template files and other HTML fragment files.

Why do I get error message: "You do not have FrontPage enabled."

You can get this error message while doing many different FrontPage related tasks. There are two caused for this. First of all, you might not have FrontPage enabled for this domain. (See our documentation.) The second reason why you might be getting this error message may be that you have excluded the "www" somewhere. Perhaps you are trying to publish your web and left out the www in the location, or perhaps you have a form that is incorrectly configured to go to http://domain.com instead of http://www.domain.com If this is the problem, simply try publishing again, or change the form, and be sure to include the www.

Why do I get an error when trying to publish subwebs?

Please see our subweb help page for information about using FrontPage subwebs.

Additional Technical Support

WebCom Technical Support can provide you with assistance regarding activating FrontPage for your domain and publishing your webs. If you have questions in these areas that are not answered by our FrontPage Help Page feel free to contact support@webcom.com. For assistance using FrontPage itself to create and maintain web pages, you should contact Microsoft Technical Support. There is also a Usenet newsgroup for FrontPage users that might be useful: microsoft.public.frontpage.client We recommend that you read WebCom's FrontPage Help before reading the newsgroup articles, so that you understand which features of FrontPage that WebCom supports.

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