Considerations that apply when you use FrontPage 2003 to edit SharePoint Portal Server 2003 sites

This article discusses considerations that apply when you use Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 to edit Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 content. It contains information about the FrontPage 2003 features and functionality that are not available when you use FrontPage 2003 to author and edit portal sites.

Overview

FrontPage 2003 is the recommended authoring tool for SharePoint Portal Server 2003. To open a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 site in FrontPage 2003, click Open Site on the File menu, type the URL of the portal site that you want to open, and then click OK. Earlier versions of SharePoint Portal Server did not support FrontPage authoring or editing.

A number of features in FrontPage 2003 are designed for specific use with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services. Certain other features in FrontPage 2003 are browse-time Web components that rely on the FrontPage Server Extensions from Microsoft, and certain other features are not specific to any Web server. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is built on top of Windows SharePoint Services and adds some specific components such as the Categories feature and the Search feature. FrontPage 2003 is a robust editor for Windows SharePoint Services. You can use FrontPage 2003 to edit all the features of Windows SharePoint Services Web sites. However, certain FrontPage 2003 features and functionality are not available when you edit SharePoint Portal Server sites. FrontPage 2003 does not support portal-specific features. Additionally, certain author-time or browse-time components are disabled. This article discusses the FrontPage 2003 features that are not available when you use FrontPage 2003 to edit SharePoint Portal Server 2003 content.

Considerations that apply when you edit subsites and areas in FrontPage 2003

A SharePoint Portal Server 2003 site contains a root-level site and several subsites. You use areas to organize information on the portal site. All areas and subareas are represented as subsites in FrontPage. In FrontPage, a subarea of an area is a subsite of the root-level site and is not nested in the area. For example, if Area1 is under the root-level site and Area11 is under Area1, Area11 is considered a subsite of the root-level site and is not a subsite of Area. Similarly, you cannot delete an area or a subarea by using FrontPage.

Considerations that apply when you edit the My Site site template in FrontPage 2003

Portal site users who are either members of the Member site group or who have the Create Sites and Create Personal Site rights can use the My Site feature in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to create their own personal site. The My Site site template is common to all portal site users. When a user clicks My Site to view their personal site, they are redirected to the same URL as all other users who access their own personal site. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 uses a GUID instead of a URL to differentiate users.

Any changes that you make to the Default.aspx page in the My Site site template affect all portal site users. For example, if a Web designer opens the My Site site template in FrontPage 2003 and then replaces the logo in the upper left corner of the Default.aspx page with a new image, all the users on the portal see the new image when they click My Site to create to their own personal site or to view their existing personal site.

FrontPage 2003 features and functionality that are not available when you edit a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 site

The following list shows FrontPage 2003 features and functionality that are not available when you open and edit a portal in FrontPage 2003:

• Publishing sites: You cannot publish a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 site from one server to another server. To move a portal site and its content to a different server, administrators must use the SharePoint Portal Server Data Backup and Restore tool (Spsbackup.exe).
  
  For more information about how to back up and restore SharePoint Portal Server 2003, see the "Backup and Restore" topic in the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administration Guide. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administration Guide (Administrator's Help.chm) is located in the Docs folder in the root directory of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 CD.
• Navigation and Link bars: You cannot insert link bars on a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 site. To maintain the integrity of the existing SharePoint Portal Server navigation, Link bars is disabled in FrontPage 2003 when you open and edit a portal site.
• Navigation view: Navigation view is disabled in FrontPage 2003 when you open and edit a portal site. Hierarchical navigation is rendered by FrontPage Server Extensions, and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 hierarchical navigation is not generated or maintained by the server extensions.
• Themes: You cannot apply a theme to an individual page on a portal site or the whole portal site when you use FrontPage 2003 to open and edit the portal site. Although themes are applied by using cascading style sheets, some Web Parts on a portal site do not work well with FrontPage themes. To apply a theme to a portal site, use the Apply theme to site functionality on the Site Settings page of the site.
• Create subsites in an area or subarea: When you open the root site of the portal, you can create subsites under that root. You can also create subsites under another subsite, so that the subsites are nested two levels deep. However, areas and subareas of the portal are represented as subsites in FrontPage 2003, and areas and subareas cannot have nested subsites. When you open an area or a subarea in FrontPage 2003, the Subsite menu is not available (appears dimmed) when you right-click a folder or an empty region of the Folder List, and then click New. In FrontPage 2003, you cannot differentiate between a subsite and an area. Both are represented by a folder icon.

FrontPage 2003 features that are available but are not recommended to use when you edit a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 site

The following list shows FrontPage 2003 features that are available but are not recommended for use when you open an edit a portal in FrontPage 2003:

• The Optimize HTML command: The Optimize HTML command does not adversely affect SharePoint Portal Server 2003 pages. However, FrontPage 2003 may have difficulty rendering some pages after you use the Optimize HTML command on that page.
• Dynamic Web Templates with existing pages: SharePoint Portal Server 2003 links to an external style sheet in the header section of a page. If you apply a Dynamic Web Template to an existing page on the portal site, the header section of page is replaced. This action may cause the removal of the link to the cascading style sheet file, and the appearance and formatting of your page is affected. However, you can use Dynamic Web Templates with new pages that you create on the portal site.

How to prevent users from opening a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 site in FrontPage 2003

If you are a SharePoint Portal Server administrator, and you want to prevent users from opening a portal site in FrontPage 2003, you can disable the authoring feature so that users cannot use FrontPage 2003 to open and author portal sites. To do so, add the wdfopensite value to the DisableWebDesignFeatures attribute in the Onet.xml file of each SharePoint Portal Server 2003 site template. The DisableWebDesignFeatures attribute is located in the Project Title tag in the Onet.xml file.

Site templates are located in the following folder on the server, where LangID is the language version of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 that is installed on the server, and where SPS* is the name of the folder that starts with "SPS" (without the quotation marks):For example, if the English (United States) language version of SharePoint Portal Server is installed on the server, site templates are located in the following folder: To prevent users from opening a portal site in FrontPage 2003:

1. On the server that is running SharePoint Portal Server 2003, start Microsoft Windows Explorer, locate the site template that you want to modify, and then open the Onet.xml file that is associated with that site template.
2. Locate the Project Title tag, and then locate the DisableWebDesignFeatures attribute.
3. Add the wdfopensite value to the DisableWebDesignFeatures attribute.
   
   The following information is an example of the Project Title tag:

    <Project Title="Team Web Site" ListDir="Lists" xmlns:ows="Microsoft SharePoint"
   AlternateHeader="PortalHeader.aspx" DisableWebDesignFeatures="wdfbackup; wdfrestore; 
   wdfpackageimport; wdfpackageexport; wdfthemeweb; wdfthemepage; wdfnavigationbars; 
   wdfnavigationview; wdfpublishview; wdfpublishselectedfile; wdfopensite"> 

The following list shows each SharePoint Portal Server 2003 area or subarea and the location of its corresponding Onet.xml file:

• Root site: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\60\Template\LangID\SPS\XML
• My Site: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\60\Template\LangID\SPSMSITE\XML
• News: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\60\Template\LangID\SPSNHOME\XML
• Company News, External News and Press Announcements, and all areas that are under the News area: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\60\Template\LangID\SPSNEWS\XML
• Site Directory: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\60\Template\LangID\SPSSITES\XML
• Topics: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\60\Template\LangID\SPSTOC\XML
• Divisions, Human Resources, Locations, Marketing, Operations, Projects, Resources, Sales, Strategy and Support, and all areas under the Topics area: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\60\Template\LangID\SPSTOPIC\XML
• Community Template: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\60\Template\LangID\SPSCOMMU\XML

For more information about SharePoint Portal Server 2003, visit the following Microsoft Web site: For more information about Windows SharePoint Services, visit the following Microsoft Web site: For more information about FrontPage, visit the following Microsoft Web site: