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Points of View in FrontPage - Reports
~~Tina Clarke, AccessFP - FrontPage Resource Centre

When you first visit the 'Report View', depending on the size of your web, it may take a couple of minutes for it to load.  This is because FrontPage builds a fresh database each time it is opened. So, it is a good idea, therefore, not to close a web while in 'Report View' or, the next time you open your site, you will have to wait for the database to generate before you can start editing. I generally leave the web in 'Page View' upon closing and, when opening, I go to 'Navigation View' so I can see when the site has loaded.

View a Web Site Summary

You can get general information about the content of your web site through the 'Site Summary report', which displays an overview of your web site's vital statistics.

The 'Site Summary report' can be accessed by the 'Report View' Icon, from the View menu, under Reports | Site Summary, or on the Reporting Bar which has the sections grouped under it.

1. Files

File Status reports display an overview of the age of files, who is working on them, when they were modified or added to your web site, and so on.

• All Files
• Recently Added Files
• Recently Changed Files
• Older Files.

TIP: Various report properties can be modified under Tools | Options | Reports View. By default, Microsoft FrontPage defines a recent file as one that has been created within the last 30 days, and it defines an older file as one that that hasn't been modified in the last 72 days. You can enter your own amounts in the Options dialog box. I would recommend setting the 'Slow Pages' to 20 seconds with a 'Connection speed' of 28.8k modem, as this setting ensures even the slowest of connections is catered to. There is one lower setting of 14.4 but in the modern world you have to set a standard that accommodates the majority of users as we progress in hardware and software.

To see a more detailed report, click on one of the blue underlined links under the 'Name' column.  There are 15 reports in the site summary with 12 reports detailing further information, the most important being 'Broken Hyperlinks'. In FrontPage 2002+ you can copy and print anyone of the reports once you're in them but not the site summary itself, but there is an add-on for this at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82f64a0a-588a-44bc-b3a5-ab674d8b6536&displaylang=en

This allows you to save the site summary report to an HTML file.

2. Problems

Maintenance Problems reports display problems with your web site, including broken links, component errors, files that take too long to download, (and will download slowly as a result) and so on. The most important of these is the 'Broken Hyperlinks' Report as it goes a long way to maintaining a healthy site.

• Unlinked Files
• Slow Pages
• Broken Hyperlinks
• Component Errors.

Running a 'Broken Hyperlinks' Report

To run a report on your hyperlinks select, 'Broken Hyperlinks' from the 'Problems' menu. The first time you run this report in a session, Microsoft FrontPage asks you to verify the hyperlinks in your web site. Click Yes.

Or you can verify individual hyperlinks by selecting a file and choosing 'Verify' on the right click context menu.

If a hyperlink's destination is not in the current web site, the status of the hyperlink is 'Unknown'.

To repair a broken hyperlinks, either right click to bring up the context menu where you can edit the page or the hyperlink:

Or, if you double-click a hyperlink with 'Broken' status the 'Edit Hyperlink' dialog box will appear.  In the 'Edit Hyperlink' dialog box, do one of the following:

• To display the page so that you can edit it, click 'Edit Page'.
• If you know the URL of the page you want to link to, type it in the 'Replace hyperlink with' box, for example: http://clarke-abstract-art.com, or click 'Browse' to browse to the page or file in a web site, file system, or on the World Wide Web.
• To repair other occurrences of this hyperlink in all pages in the current web site, enter a valid hyperlink in the 'Replace hyperlink with' box, click 'Change in all pages', and then click 'Replace'.
• To repair other occurrences of this hyperlink in selected pages, enter a valid hyperlink in the 'Replace hyperlink with' box, and then click 'Change in selected pages'. Select the pages, and then click 'Replace'.

NOTES:

• If the new destination is valid, the hyperlink is no longer displayed as a broken hyperlink in the 'Broken Hyperlinks' report.
• When you have finished the maintenance don't forget to update all hyperlinks.
  • On the Tools menu, click Recalculate Hyperlinks.
  • Click 'Yes' to confirm when asked.
• In a Web site based on SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft, hyperlinks in document libraries and interactive lists are created and managed automatically.
• Having entered a hyperlink on your page, use the keyboard shortcut (Shift + Enter) to cause a page break directly after it.  FrontPage will put the closing tag for the link (</a>) after the page break. This is what it will look like in HTML view.
  <a href="mypage.htm">My pages<br></a>
• If you then delete the text for the link, it will remove the text, however it still leaves the anchor tags.
  <a href="mypage.htm"><br></a>
  This means that the hyperlink, though not appearing in FrontPage, is still in the underlying HTML and is 'linked' to the <br> tag. To fix this you will have to switch to the 'HTML View' (Ctrl-F = Find function) and delete it, then save the page.

3. Workflow

Workflow Status reports indicate the status of the files and assignments in your web site, Files in your web site can be categorized, assigned to different authors, and checked in and out using source control - all of which you can monitor using reports. This feature is available on root Web sites hosted on web servers running SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft or Microsoft FrontPage® 2002 Server Extensions only.

• Review Status - This property allows you to track files through the production process. For example, when an outsourced file has had its source code checked, the status might be changed from 'code review' to 'content review.'
• Assigned To - This property enables you to track who is working on a file at any point during the project. When files are passed on, this property should be set to the new owner.
• Categories - Instead of grouping related files by placing them all into a folder, you can group files by assigning them to one or more categories. For example, instead of placing all my 'FrontPage express' files in a separate folder, I can assign them all to a 'FrontPage Express' category. That way when it comes time to update those files, I can quickly find all of the related files.

How to categorize your files

If you want to categorize a single file, right-click the file, click 'Properties' on the context menu, and then click the 'Workgroup' tab.

If you want to categorize multiple files, press and hold CTRL, and then click each file you want to categorize. Right-click any of these selected files, click 'Properties' on the context menu, and then click the 'Workgroup' tab.
In the 'Available Categories' box, select the check boxes for the categories that apply to this file. You can select multiple categories.

NOTE: FrontPage has several built-in categories, such as

• Business
• Competition
• Expense Report
• Goals/Objectives
• Ideas, In Process
• Miscellaneous
• Planning
• Schedule
• Travel
• VIP
• Waiting

You can also add your own categories as I did with the 'FrontPage Express' Category.

• Go to Report View | All Files.
• Right-click any file, click 'Properties' on the context menu, and then click the 'Workgroup' tab.
• Click 'Categories', and then, in the 'New category' box, type a category name.
• Click 'Add'.

   

• Publish Status - This property allows you to determine when files in a Web project get published. You can tick the 'Exclude this file when publishing to the rest of the web' in the 'Workgroup' tab. Or, in the Workflow | Publish Status View, left click and a drop down menu appears where you can choose either 'Don't publish' or 'Publish'
• Checkout Status - The Checkout Status report applies only when you are using the source control feature of FrontPage.  This feature ensures that only one person at a time can edit a file. To enable built-in source control
  you must have administrator privileges and your web server must support the FrontPage Server Extensions.
  • Close all files in your web site before enabling source control.
  • Tools | Web Settings | General tab, select the 'Use document check-in and check-out' check box. You can find more information at:
    http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2003/default.htm

4. Usage

Site Usage reports display and track information about the visits to your web site, including page hits and hits in daily, weekly, or monthly summaries, browsers used by site visitors, and so on.

Usage processing must also be turned on by the Web server. Additionally, if the site is based on Windows SharePoint Services, you must have administrator privileges.

With usage analysis reports, you can determine what pages in your Web site are most popular, using daily, weekly, or monthly reports. These reports can be exported to HTML or Microsoft Excel, and filtered to see just the information that you want.

The Site Administration page lets you enable or disable the collection of usage information for your Web site, and specify how often usage information is collected and kept.

• Usage Summary - A summary of the visits to your Web site.
• Monthly Summary - A summary of Web site activity by month.
• Weekly Summary - A summary of Web site activity by week.
• Daily Summary - A summary of Web site activity by day.
• Monthly Page Hits - The number of hits (individual file transfers) on your Web site by month.
• Visiting Users - The approximate number of unique site visitors to your Web site.
• Operating Systems - A summary of the operating systems used by your Web site visitors.
• Browsers - A list of the browsers used by your Web site visitors.
• Referring Domains - A list of the most frequent referring domains to your Web site. Referring URLs - A list of the most frequent referring URLs to your Web site.
• Search Strings - A list of the most frequent search terms used to find your Web site.

See http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/hfws.aspx?OfficeXP=true&AssetID=HA010347231033&CTT=6&Origin=
EC010272491033  for more information.

In the next issue, I will cover additional FrontPage Report features, such as Printing Reports, Customizing Reports, and Troubleshooting Reports.

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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