 Blue
Stream
Current version: 1.0
Product last updated: 5/17/02
Installation
You probably have an .exe file that you downloaded. This is a program
that will install the template files into the correct places on your
computer.
First, make sure that FrontPage is closed.
To run the installer, double-click on the icon. Some dialog boxes
will pop up and take you through the installation process. If it seems
to go okay, you may then create a new web! Skip the rest of these
installation instructions to find out how to use the template.
If the installation fails, there are a few things you may try. First,
if the installer is on your desktop, create a new folder on your desktop
and drag the icon into the new folder, then try running it from there.
If this doesn't work, you can try extracting the files and placing them
manually. Right-click on the installer and select "Extract to folder..."
Extract to this temporary directory. Note: If you are using a
non-English version, please see this
info page at PixelMill.
In the fp2000 folder you'll find three folders called Pages, Themes,
and Webs.
Open the Themes folder and there should be another folder called
blue-stream. Copy this folder to this location:
C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Themes
In the Webs folder there should be another folder called
bluestream.tem.
Copy this folder to this location:
C:/Program Files/Microsoft Office/Templates/1033/Webs
If you are unable to extract the files, then
contact support.
Using the Template - Basics
-
After installation, open FrontPage.
-
In FP2002, go to File > New > Page or Web. (In FP2000, go to
File > New > Web.) In FP2002, click on "Web Site Templates"
in the right column.
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Choose the Blue Stream template from your
list of templates.
-
In the right column, make sure that the location of your new
web is correct. The usual default is a subfolder inside of
your "My Webs" folder. You may choose a different name for
the subfolder. You may also create a new web directly on
your server by typing in the URL of your web site.
-
Click OK and FrontPage will make your new web.
-
When FrontPage is finished working, you should see the pages
of your new web site in the Folder List. (If you can't see
the Folder List, go to View > Folder List.) Double-click on
any of these pages to open it and edit it.
-
While you are working on the web site, go to File > Preview
in Browser to see your pages as they will appear in a
browser. Try not to depend on the "Preview" tab in
FrontPage. You may leave the browser window open and refresh
it as you make and save changes.
-
To make more pages, simply take existing pages and go
to File > Save As. Save the page as a new file name, and
click "Change" to change the page title. (Notes: The page
title is what shows up in your link bars and page banners.
The file name should NOT have spaces or special characters
in the name, but should look like either mynewpage.htm or
my_new_page.htm.) Then, switch to Navigation View and drag
the page into your navigation structure to add the page to
the correct link bars. (Learn
more.)
-
To delete pages, simply right-click the page in your
folder list and choose "delete."
- To publish your web site, go to File > Publish Web. Type
in the location of your server, for example, http://www.yoursite.com.
If you want to publish your web temporarily and "hide" it behind
your existing site, publish it to a subfolder of your web, for
example, http://www.yoursite.com/testfolder. Click Publish. You may
need to enter your username and password. See our
Server Issues article if after
publishing, some things don't look right on your published site.
Using the Template - Specifics
Below are some specific issues and questions that you may have about
the Blue Stream web template. Please also look in our support index for answers
to more general questions. We've tried to organize the support issues in
a "top-down" format -- i.e., starting with the index page and the very
top of the page, then continuing throughout the rest of the web site. If
you find an issue that you think should be on this page or in our
support area, please let us know! Meta Tags
This template comes with meta tags already in the home page. Go into
HTML view and look near the top of the page. You will see two line of
meta tags that look like this:
<META name="description" content="Your description here.">
<META name="keywords" content="list, keywords, here">
Edit these meta tags with your description and keywords.
Some tips:
Don't repeat keywords. Some search engines automatically disqualify you.
Take your keywords and put as many as possible as part of your
description.
Now take your description and use it as your 'search engine friendly
text.'
Don't put your keywords in "comment tags." This can also disqualify you.
Don't make your keywords the same color as a background. This can
disqualify you.
The "your logo here" image may be replaced with your own logo. The
easiest way to do this is to replace the image with one that is the same
dimension (192x58 pixels) by dragging your image file
(named "yourlogohere.gif")
into the images folder of your web and replacing the existing one. This
will replace the image across your web site. If your logo file has
different dimensions, you will have to edit each page. The most
time-efficient way to do this is to: Select all the pages in your folder
list, right-click on the select files, and choose Open to open all the
page. On the first page, delete the "yourlogohere" image, add your image
and save the page, then click on the image and hit Ctrl-C to copy it.
Then, go into each of your pages, click on the old yourlogohere image
and hit Ctrl-V to paste in your new logo. You may either save and close
your pages as you go, or keep them open and go to File > Save All to
save all of them at once. Search engine text
This area allows you to put keyword-rich words at the very top of
your page to get a higher ranking in some search engines. You will still
need to add meta keyword tags to your pages.
Horizontal Navigation Bars
In FrontPage 2002, the navigation bars use a text link bar style
with vertical lines separating the links. This is a FP2002 option only.
FP2000 users will see button style text links with a limited area
for your buttons. The first horizontal navigation bar uses the
"Top level" of your navigation structure. The second nav bar
displays your "Child Pages Under Home." To edit the links on the horizontal nav bar,
please see our tutorial on editing link
bars. Flash movies
The moving water and animated squares are embedded Flash movies. You
will not be able to edit or change these movies, although you may delete
them and replace them with static images. If you wish to have different
animation, please request Custom Work, or see some of the related Components.
We have many Components with
different images that you may purchase separately as an add-on. Page Title
The page title is in a table cell under the moving water. This page title
is a FrontPage-generated component. You can change it by changing the
page title in your Navigation View. To learn more about how to do this,
please look at our tutorial on inserting
and editing Page Banners. White cells in Normal
View
Some of the layout cells may look white in Normal View - for
example, the cell that holds the "print this page" and "add to
favorites" buttons. If you go to File > Preview in Browser, you'll see that
your page looks fine. Some of the cells use background images (for example,
the blue stripe across the top is a background image). Netscape
4 does funny things with background images, and in order
to fix it, the template was created with additional "blank"
background images. Unfortunately this causes the cells to
seem white in Page View.
Print this Page button
This is a special image included with the web
template. There is JavaScript at the top of each page
with a function that allows the browser to call up the
print dialog. If you don't want this button, delete it.
Add to Favorites button (home page
only)
In FrontPage's Normal View, you won't see this
button. Instead, you'll see a little flag icon. This is
because there is JavaScript code that writes the HTML
code for the button depending on whether or not the user
is using Netscape or Internet Explorer.
(Add-to-favorites works only in Internet Explorer.) If
you don't want the Add to Favorites button, you will
need to go into the HTML code and delete the code that
looks like this:
<!-- begin bookmarking script --><A NAME="here"></A><SCRIPT>
<!--
if ((navigator.appVersion.indexOf("MSIE") > 0) && (parseInt(navigator.appVersion)
>= 4)) {
document.write('<A HREF="#here" onclick="window.external.AddFavorite(location.href,document.title);"><IMG
BORDER="0" SRC="images/addtofav.gif" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="23"></A>');
}
//-->
</SCRIPT><!-- end bookmarking script -->
Special Text Area
In the blue area of each page (white in normal view) is a limited
text area for you to put some special text. You may want to use it for a
short tagline that describes each page.
Left Navigation Bar
The left link bar is displaying pages on the "Child Level." If
you are unfamiliar with how FrontPage nav bars work, please visit this
tutorial on Using Navigation View.
You can then learn how to edit the buttons (changing the names, adding
more buttons, etc.) in our tutorial on editing link
bars.
Last-updated Script
This template contains JavaScript code for writing the date that
each page was last modified. You may keep this or delete it. If you want
to delete it, you will have to go into the HTML code and delete the code
that looks like this:
Last updated: <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="Javascript">
<!--
document.write((modDate.getMonth()+1) + "/" + modDate.getDate() + "/" +
(modYear+"").substring(2,4))
//-->
</SCRIPT>
Copyright info and Your Company Name
At the bottom of the page is an area for you to have copyright
information. You will need to update this on every page -- sorry! We
will try to fix this in a later version to make it easier to use. Site Map
The site map is a FrontPage-generated component. To view the
site map, go to File > Preview in Browser. To update the site map,
you may need to open the page, click on the site map, and save the
page. FP2000 Page Template
This template comes with a "page template" that you may use if you
are using FrontPage 2000. You may duplicate this page. You may also
modify existing pages easily by changing the horizontal alignment of the
top bar.
Pop-up windows on About Us page
The About Us page comes with two employee bio pop-up windows. There
is JavaScript code on this page that helps you do this. Each of the
links opens up a separate web page that has the info about your
employee. These two pages are "profile1.htm" and "profile2.htm." You
will have to edit these two pages, and save copies of them to create
more bio pages. Then, to create more pop-up links, simply copy an
existing link and edit it. If you copy and paste the first Employee
link, then select the link, right-click and select Hyperlink Properties,
you'll see that the link looks like this: javascript:pop('profile1.htm');
Simply edit the "profile1.htm" URL with the URL to your new employee bio
page. For example, if you have a new page called "myemployee1.htm," then
your pop-up window link should look like: javascript:pop('myemployee1.htm');
Bug in Profile pages
There is a coding error in the profile pages (profile1.htm,
profile2.htm) that pop-up from the About Page. This is easily fixed (and
we'll fix it in a later version of Blue Stream). Go into the HTML view
of your profile pages and go to Edit > Replace. In the "Find what"
field, type in "600" and in the "Replace with" field, type in "275".
Click "Replace All." This will fix the width of spacer graphics in the
layout so that they are the correct size.
Pages too wide?
Blue Stream was originally designed to fit in an 800x600 window, and
resize to larger dimensions. If you want your page to fit within an
640x800 window, or if you want your page to print on a "portrait" piece
of paper, you'll have to make a slight modification to your pages.
Go to Edit > Replace. In the "Find what" field, type in WIDTH="600".
In the "Replace with" field, type in "WIDTH=400". Select "All
Pages" and check "Find in HTML," then click "Replace All." (Note that
you'll have to do this AFTER fixing the Profile pages as described
above.) Catalog Page and Category
Pages
The catalog page is a suggested layout for a product catalog and
does not come with ecommerce capability. To make more product
tables...
There are actually two levels of nested tables in the product table
layout. First is an outer two-column (500 pixel wide) table with a grey
background. The first row holds the product name, then the second row
contain nested tables with a white background which hold product
pictures and info.
To make more rows, click in the last "title" cell (cell with the product
name). Hit tab twice to highlight through the product cells. Hit tab one
more time to create a new grey row, then tab twice more to create
another grey row.
Your first new grey row will hold the product names.
Now, click inside an existing white cell and go to Table > Select >
Table. Then Edit > Copy. Place your cursor in your second new grey row
(below the product name) and Edit > Paste the white table inside. Now
edit your product info. |
