Novice Web Designer

[sarah06779]

I'm a novice web designer. I have a site ready to be uploaded and thought
that I did so through the FTP that came with the computer.

Last week, I noticed that some changes had been made to my computer. I
entered "Administrative Tools" to research the changes, but while I was in
Admin Tools, I found some items that I never heard of before: FrontPage
Server Extentions, Internet Information Services, FrontPage snap-ins, some
"default web page and default web server and some SMTP something". I hate to
sound stupid, but I have no idea why these programs are on my computer.

I don't remember downloading them, but I did download a free MS Office
Package. Do those things come with MS Office automatically?

Strangely, when I click "All Programs", I cannot find MS FrontPage and don't
seem to be able to use it. But it does look very useful for web publishing.

Please, somebody try to help me sort this out. You kind of have to talk to
me as if you were talking to a 9 year old (I'm actually 45).

I'd sincerely appreciate it!!

Sarah

 

[Andrew Murray]

Not sure of the specifics of your question but I'll define some of the terms
you've raised:

*** The Frontpage Server Extensions are the "heart" of Frontpage. These are
server side scripts that are installed by your web host, that sit on your
web server that make certain functions in frontapge work - eg sending an
email from a web form.

A form of the extensions also reside on your machine because there are some
"design time" elements that use them e.g. shared borders, and include pages.
These display in "real time" as you work otherwise, they wouldn't display
until you publish the page. (using oridinary "Server Side Includes" are
like this - they won't show an included page unless the page has been
publshed to a web server....but I digress).

The server extensions allow a user to create a web site and get some basic
interactivity going (like sending email from forms, site search, setting up
a guestbook or discussion forum).

Of course, these functions in Frontpage are very basic, and can also be done
to a greater extent with more complicated scripts in languages like VBscript
or PHP - generally known as "server side scripts" because the code they
contain is executed 'server side' rather than 'client side' (which refers to
the user's computer).

*** IIS (Internet Information Service) is the name of Microsoft's web server
software - you wouldn't have that unless you have Windows 2000 or Windows XP
Professional and had installed it from the Windows CD. IIS is what makes a
Windows web server work. No need to worry about that.

You can run IIS on your own computer (if you have Windows 2000 or XP Pro
(and I think on Vista Ultimate(?)) - its on the Windows CD as above - just
install it through Add/Remove programs - however that may be a bit advanced
for you. Anyway, its a good platform to see the web site working in full,
mostly, without having to publish it to the live web server.

*** SMTP stands for "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol" (I think that's it) -
this is generally your outgoing email server (again, this is an ISP, or
webhost computer system, nothing you have to worry about, unless you're
hosting your own website, which is a complicated issue, especially when you
need to address security concerns, and web hosting is best left to the
experts.

I've never messed with the "Admin" tools in Fronntpage, so not sure what
else is there. I believe some of those features have to do with setting
permissions on the web server for sub-webs and and "authoring" permissions,
but I'm not that familiar (or in fact at all) with them.

MS Office has nothing to do with these things. Frontpage generally doesn't
come with MS Office (except possibly "extreme" editions)

Hope that clears up some of the mystery for you, but I don't know if I've
even touched on your actual question.....

 

[David Berry]

IIS is Internet Information Server and it is the web server that comes with
Windows XP Professional. The other things, FrontPage Server Extensions,
SMTP etc also come with IIS. They are used to allow you to test web sites
locally or, if you wanted to, to be able to host them locally.

Having IIS does not mean you have FrontPage. You have to buy Microsoft
FrontPage.

 

[Andrew Murray]

Now I'm confused - I assumed the OP was talking about the "Admin" tools in
Frontpage, not the Administrative Tools in IIS.
Should then really be a questions for windows.server (or windows.general)
since its not a FP question.

Anyway, to the OP, you can remove those components through Add/Remove
programs.

 

[David Berry]

She mentioned snap-ins, IIS, SMTP etc which are part of the IIS install on
XP. You wouldn't see those in the FP Admin.