Web site Design in MS FrontPage

10. After completing the previous steps, you should now have a design you are more or less happy with. As you may have noticed, web design is a complex process and a certain degree of practice and trial and error is required.

What is a Dynamic Web Template?

Dynamic Web Templates are a feature in MS Frontpage which allows you to automatically generate new pages and automatically update existing pages that are linked to the template. They are saved using the file extension .dwt. Using a Dynamic Web Template will ensure that the design elements of your pages will remain completely consistent which looks much more professional than a series of pages with a varied layout. Automatically updating linked pages is much quicker than trying to do the same task manually.

To Create a Dynamic Web Template:

1. Create your layout design

2. Insert a table with a single column/row where you would like the page content to appear.

3. Save the file as a Dynamic Web Template

 

4. Create editable regions in your template

Type a name for the editable region and click the add button

5. Save the template. Your editable region will now be highlighted and labelled in design view

6. From the File menu, select New. From the New Pane that appears on the right of the screen, select "from existing page"

select the template file you previously created; a new page will be generated. You will notice that you can type, insert images and edit the editable region (in this case ‘content’) but the other areas on the page are locked. To make changes to the other areas, edit the dynamic web template (.dwt) file. When you save it; it will automatically update all the pages linked to it.

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