Converting a Front Page web site to a Web Man web site

Procedure summary:

• Fill in the form values.
• Click on the "Convert" button.
• Have browser tabs open to the new Web Man and old Front Page webs.
• Check the report in the gray area.
• If the report and new web site look OK, click the "Rebuild Navigation" button.

About the form fields

The Front Page web must exist. Web Man can't convert what's not there. Web Man will throw out a lot of Front Page specific things, like _vti and _theme folders.

The Web Man web need not exist; Web Man will make a new folder for it if necessary. Careful! If it does exist, Web Man will overwrite it.

The template web is some web known to contain a good Web Man template for your newly converted site. You can choose "webman" itself here, and pick from its templates. It's probably not a good idea to take one from the Front Page web, since those use tables for navigation. Web Man, instead, uses css divisions. For that reason also, Front Page style sheets probably will not work completely.

Fill in the location of your chosen template, relative to the template- bearing web. Web Man will copy it over into your new site, and will use it immediately to format that site.

Hand tuning your converted site

Take a look your new site in your browser, and compare with your old Front Page web. The conversion will almost certainly not be perfect.

The home page will probably look odd, since it was converted using an ordinary page template. Consider just copying it over, and hand tuning it. Or, you might find its special Front Page style sheets working well also for Web Man.

Framesets are converted, but usually styled poorly. That is because all the frame sources are styled as normal pages, probably not appropriate. Consider removing all styling from thin or narrow frame sources. Shared borders will also cause problems for frame sources.

What Web Man makes up

• web configuration: where to put site map, configuration file
• names for style sheets

What Web Man takes from Front Page

• folder names
• page titles and file names
• scripts
• key words and descriptions
• shared border requests, default and special
• where to put style sheets
• base targets
• site map
• page content: frame sets or body, or content cell from a Front Page navigation table

What Web Man takes from the template

• the template itself
• document type
• style sheets
• shared borders

What Web Man will throw away

• Everything else