Tina's FrontPage News
~~Tina
Clarke, AccessFP - FrontPage Resource Centre
Adding Functionality To Your Website With FrontPage 2002,
Part III
~ Included Content
INSERTING REPEATED
CONTENT - You can display a web page on another page in the web site,
allowing you to maintain separate pages. For example, to display a copyright
notice on several pages in a web site, create one page that contains the
copyright notice, and include that page on other pages in the web site. When
you update the copyright notice, you simply update that one page; all other
pages that include the copyright page will be automatically updated.
SUBSTITUTING CONTENT
- FrontPage includes tools that will insert content from one page to another
page, display pages and images on a certain date and more. These are known
as configuration variables. FrontPage has four predefined variables that
gather information automatically when you put them on a page:
Author – is the user name of
the person who created the page.
Modified by – is the user name of the person who most recently edited the
page.
Description – is a description of the page.
Page URL – is the current location of the page.
NOTE: Some of FrontPage’s web templates contain additional
standard configuration variables.
You can also define a
variable yourself, such as a copyright or a comment.
NOTE: This information is not for your visitors, but for other
people who will work on your website.
CREATING INFORMATION THAT
CAN UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY - The page based on schedule component allows
you to merge one page with another, the only difference between this and a
normal page component is that it enables you to change the pages
automatically on a certain date.
Inserting an Include Page: -
Includes are something we talked about at the end of Part II. Unlike a
shared border which has to stick to the page’s margins, an include component
can be inserted anywhere.
Place the curser where you
want the include page to appear. Include pages spread themselves across the
page so it’s best to utilise a table with an Include and then you can
control the rest of the width of the page. Go to Insert | Web Component |.
On the left pane click ‘Included Content’. In the right pane click
Page. Press Finish. The ‘Include Page Properties' Box appears
here you can type in the page you want to appear in the current page,
however in my experience, it is best to utilise the browse button as this
makes sure the path is absolutely correct. With include pages you might be
best to name them with an underscore, e.g.: _includemenufpresources.htm
as this excludes the page from being included in the FrontPage Search and
TOC (Table of Contents). When the page name has been inserted, press OK and
the contents of the included page will appear in the current page.
If you want the contents to
be viewed only by you keep the include pages in the _private folder.
On the server this will only be private if you use the FrontPage Extensions
on the host.
In Normal view if you pass
the mouse over the included information, the pointer turns into a little
hand holding a piece of paper, this is there to remind you of the included
content. To edit the properties box, double click the included
content.
To update the included
content merely open the include page and edit the contents and save. Next
time FrontPage recalculates and refreshes the website all the pages that
this include page is inserted on will all have that content updated, saving
you hours of time. This is why it is particularly good for customised
navigation bars. If you don’t want to wait, go to Tools | Recalculate
Hyperlinks and a box will appear. Click Yes and FrontPage proceeds with the
recalculation.
How to use the Substitution
Component: -
Go to Tools | Web Settings | Parameters tab | Add |
In the Name box, type a name
for the variable. (This is what you will call the variable.) In the Value
box, type a value for the variable. (This is what will be displayed on the
page.)
Click OK. Position the cursor in a page where you want to display the
variable. Go to Insert | Web Component | and, in the left pane, click
‘Included Content’, and in the right pane, double-click ‘Substitution’. In
the ‘Substitute with’ box, click a variable from the list (for example,
Author) and click OK and it appears on the page. If you selected the
Description command however you won’t see anything when viewed via the
browser. This is because you have not specified a description anywhere for
this page.
To add a description Go to
View | Folders and right click the current page you are editing and select
Properties from the pop up menu the Dialog box will be named after the
current page for example ‘mypage.htm Properties’. Select the Summary tab and
type, (for example) “This is an example of the description” into the
Comments text box and click OK. Now preview the page in the browser and you
will see the description.
NOTE: If you use the Substitution Component to display ‘URL
configuration variable’, the URL that appears corresponds to the computer on
which the page is CURRENTLY located. If you later publish the page on
another web server the old, incorrect URL remains displayed inside the page.
To fix this, just reinsert the component.
How to change content
automatically: -
This component acts much like an include page however the difference is that
the ‘Page Based on Schedule’ Component enables you to change the pages
automatically on a certain date. For example you can set an included page
with the text Welcome to automatically change to Merry Christmas on December
31st.
Display a
web page or picture at selected times
Position the cursor where
you want to display another page or picture. Go to Insert | Web Component |
and in the left pane click ‘Included Content’. In the right pane,
double-click either ‘Page Based on a Schedule’ or ‘Picture Based on a
Schedule’.
Do one or more of the
following:
In the ‘During the scheduled
time’ box, type the relative URL of the page or picture to include, or click
Browse to locate it.
To specify a page or picture
to display outside the specified time period, in the Before and after the
scheduled time box, type the relative URL of the page or picture you want to
include, or click Browse to locate it.
In the drop-down boxes after
Starting, specify the year, month, day, and time at which you want to start
displaying the page or picture.
In the drop-down boxes after
Ending, specify the year, month, day, and time at which you want to stop
displaying the page or picture.
NOTE:
The web server's clock is used to determine the time period.
The ‘Picture Based on
Schedule’ component enables you, for example, to turn your standard
welcoming graphic to a picture of a pumpkin during Halloween and back to the
standard picture, then a picture of a Christmas tree at Xmas.
NOTE: All the included Content options open the same dialog box,
except for page Banners, which opens the Page Banner Properties dialog box
and we will be discussing Page Banners along with other Cool Components in
Part IV.
Tina Clarke - Microsoft MVP - FrontPage, is
the Webmaster of AccessFP - FrontPage Resource Centre
http://accessfp.net/
and http://addonfp.com
She is also an editor of AnyFrontPageBytes Ezine. Subscribe to the ezine
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AnyFrontPageBytes and
get FREE FrontPage E-Books upon joining. And don't forget to subscribe to get
Weekly FrontPage Tips. Tina is also an artist and the owner of
http://clarke-abstract-art.com
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