Once your site's goal is defined, you'll probably be eager to start designing your site using FrontPage, right? Not so fast. We recommend sketching out the structure of your site beforehand, as shown here.

Use a pencil and paper (or a diagramming tool, like Microsoft® Visio®) to draw boxes for pages and arrows for links. Remember to keep your goal in mind as you do this.

This is essentially the process of creating a visual outline. And it will save you a lot of time to do this on paper before your site is constructed. Just think: It's easier to erase a few boxes and start over than it is to delete and rebuild pages in an already-built Web site.

• Should your site have a header and footer that's common to each page?
  
• Should your site have a consistent method of navigation on each page?
  
• Do you have any marketing requirements that must be fulfilled? For example, should you stick to certain fonts and color schemes?
  
• Does your site need any legal requirements, like a copyright notice?

Using your sketches as a model, you'll eventually use FrontPage to design Web pages in HTML. You might use a table for the skeletal structure, or layout, of the page.

Once the layout is defined, you can fill it with content. For example, you'll want to add text, hyperlinks, pictures, and interactive buttons.

As we mentioned before, a Web site cannot be seen by others unless it is published to a Web server. What is a Web server?

A Web server is a computer that runs special serving software. That software "serves" HTML pages and associated files when requested by a client, such as a Web browser.

At first, when hearing the words "client" and "server," you might think you are at a restaurant. Well, this analogy is not that far off.

When you use your browser to visit a site, you typically make your request by entering a URL (for example: http://example.microsoft.com). A URL is a Uniform Resource Locator. It's simply an address for a file on the Web.

When the server receives your request, it serves or downloads the page you need, plus all of its associated files like pictures, and so on.

Where do you find a Web server? That depends on how widely available you want your site to be.

World Wide Web If you want your site available on the World Wide Web, you need to find a company that offers space on their server. Companies like these are typically called Web site hosting companies, although you might sometimes hear them called Internet service providers. To find a Web site hosting company, search the Internet using your favorite search engine or use the URL provided in the practice session at the end of this lesson.

Intranet If you want your site available only to your company's intranet, then your IT department may have a server you can use. It's also possible that your very own computer may be able to be configured as a Web server. For details, you'll want to consult your IT department, your manager, or the nearest computer guru.

If you want your Web site available to the World Wide Web, then you'll want to shop around for a hosting company and compare different options. Cost, reliability, storage space, customer service, and security are all good things to compare.

One additional thing to look for is whether or not the hosting company supports FrontPage Server Extensions from Microsoft or Microsoft SharePoint® Services.

These are two technologies that a server administrator can run on a Web server. (You do not need to install them on your own computer.) They extend the functionality of the server, making it easy for you to add special features to your Web pages.

Link bars, discussions, and hit counters are just a few features they can provide. In addition, these two technologies also provide convenient publishing features, which we'll explain in more detail later.

To put your site on a Web server, you publish it. Publishing generally means copying all of the files to a remote location on a server. In most cases, the remote location is either an HTTP path or an FTP path. The path you use depends on what technologies your server supports.

A server running FrontPage Server Extensions or SharePoint Services If your Web server is running one of these technologies, you would publish your site to an HTTP location. For example: http://MyServer/MyWebSite.

A server supporting FTP FTP (the File Transfer Protocol) is another popular way to upload files to a remote server. If your server supports FTP, you would publish to an FTP location. For example, ftp://ftp.MyServer.com/myFolder. (Please note that even though you publish to an FTP path, you would still visit the site using an HTTP path in your browser.)

A server supporting WebDAV Although not as common as the methods above, your server may support WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning). If this is the case, you would publish your site to an HTTP location, for example, http://MyServer/MyWebSite.

To find out which publishing method your server supports, contact your hosting company, or your IT department.