Personal Web Server

When you first start the installation, FrontPage tells you that it has not found a Personal Web Server on you computer and prompts you to install it. The documentation does not say exactly what a PWS is or what it does or why it is needed on a standalone computer not connected to a network. It creates a folder C:\WEBSHARE with subfolders FTPROOT, SCRIPTS, and WWWROOT. Any Webs you create will be placed as folders under C:\WEBSHARE\WWWROOT.

Once the PWS is installed, you can proceed with installation of FrontPage, Image Composer, and Internet Explorer. Curiously, the version of IE supplied on the CD is 3.02 rather 4.0 or 4.01. Better to skip this and get IE 5.0 from the Microsoft's Web site.

Once you restart your computer after installing the PWS, its icon appears in the System Tray. Double-clicking on the icon (or right click and select Properties) brings up a tabbed dialog. Here you see that your Web address is http://buttercp/, and your default home page is at C:\WebShare\wwwroot\index.htm. Entering this Web address in the Address box of Internet Explorer brings up your default home page. On the Startup tab you can start and stop the Web Server. You can also specify if it is to run automatically at startup and whether the icon is to appear in the taskbar tray. There is an Administration tab that leads to a sequence of Web pages for administering the Server. The Services tab lets you start and stop the FTP and HTTP services. Normally HTTP is running and FTP is stopped. The FTP Server Home Root Directory default is C:\WebShare\ftproot.

FrontPage Installation

Custom installation presents you with the following choices:

The first three are selected by default.

If you select the FrontPage Personal Web Server, it will put the Web in "C:\FrontPage Webs" by default, although that can be changed. Not wanting to install a conflicting server, I unchecked this option.

Image Composer 1.5 Installation

Installation options are:

Without giving you a choice, Image Composer hijacks whatever previous program you have assigned to open image files when you click on them and makes itself the default.

Image Composer

With Image Composer, you can:

Transparency

GIF Animator

FrontPage Operation

The first time you run FrontPage you get a message that says, "FrontPage will now try to determine your machine's host name and TCP/IP address. This may take several minutes." On my machine it took a second for it to tell me, "FrontPage has found that your host name is 'buttercp'. You can now start using FrontPage."

Importing an existing Web

I had copied all of my existing Webs to C:\WebShare\wwwroot\. I proceeded to import one of the Webs. I gave it the same name as the existing Web. It created the link structure in the Navigation view. Thinking that that was sufficient evidence that it had imported the Web successfully, I cancelled the remaining operation. Big mistake. It deleted all the files in the Web. But it did not delete the Web from FrontPage's knowledge. Thereafter when I would start FrontPage, it offered this Web for opening. Whenever I tried to open it, I got the message, "There is no server on port 80 at 'buttercp'." So I restarted the program. Now I get an illegal operation error in INETSW95.

 Finally I uninstalled FrontPage and then reinstalled it. That solved the immediate problems, but I still couldn't import the Web I wanted since it said it already existed. So I went to the Server's WWW Administrator - Directory and deleted the references to it. While I was there, I changed the default page name from default.htm to index.htm. That didn't help. I still got a message, "Server error: Web already exists."

FrontPage Editor