Getting Connected With FrontPage 2003

Using FrontPage 2003 to connect to a subweb hosted on an ITS web server is fairly straightforward and is generally composed of the following steps:

Step One: Connect to the NAU VPN

To protect your password we have configured many of our servers to only accept connections from specific Internet addresses, namely those on the VPN networks. While not strictly necessary for many on-campus computers it's always a good idea to use the VPN. The extra layer of encryption provided by the VPN ensures that your account password is never sent across the Internet in a readable state. And if you're coming from off-campus then connecting to the VPN is a requirement!

If you've never connected to the VPN before then ITS has a dedicated VPN site to help you get started.

Step Two: Open Your Subweb

The first thing you need to do is launch FrontPage 2003. Once it is running use the File --> Open Site... option from the main menu:

You should then see a dialog that looks similar to this one:

In the Site name: text field type the complete URL (Web site address) of your subweb. The URL of your subweb should have been given to you when you created your site. For students it will be of the form http://pine.ucc.nau.edu/(username) and for staff/faculty it will be http://oak.ucc.nau.edu/(username). Of course you'll want to leave out the parentheses.

After you've typed in your subweb URL click the Open button. You should then be presented with a login dialog where you'll need to type your username and password:

User name: should be set to your Windows user account. If you are a student this will most likely be NAU-STUDENTS\(username) and if you are a staff or faculty member then use NAU\(username). Again, leave out the parentheses.

Once you've entered your account username and password click the OK button to open the subweb. If you entered your account credentials correctly then you should see an empty FrontPage subweb waiting for you to create some new web pages:

Create a New Page

Web sites without any pages are kind of a drag so our next task is to actually put some content in your new subweb. Luckily, this part is easy! All you have to do is click the New Page icon in the tool bar:

New Page

Edit the page, adding whatever content you'd like. In the example below you can see that I have added a couple of lines of text to the new blank page:

After you've added some text to your new page go ahead and save it to the server. You can either do this via the File --> Save... menu option or click the Save icon in the toolbar:

Save the new page

When you save the page it will automatically be placed on the server and made accessible to clients coming in via the web. If you name it index.htm it will become your default page so if users request http://pine.ucc.nau.edu/(your username)/ they will see it.

In this screenshot I used FireFox to view my new home page on Pine:

Conclusion

If you've made it this far in the tutorial then you should now know the basics for connecting to a subweb on an ITS web server with FrontPage 2003.

Of course, there are other ways to access your site content besides working directly on the server as I have demonstrated here. Another popular method is to define a local site on your hard drive and then publish the content to the web server. This method has the advantage that you can work on your web site even if your computer is not connected to the Internet. But we'll leave that for a future tutorial.

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