If you have not yet completed your website I would recommend that you don't wait until you are all finished before you attempt to publish something.   If you have not yet contracted with a server (in which case you should use ours, but if you don't) it is a good idea not to pay for a full year in advance until you've had a chance to test it. 

The publishing "feature" in FrontPage is one of those things that is perfect when everything goes smoothly and is impossible to figure out when it doesn't. Although there are some helpful servers, I get far too many calls from people whos servers have told them that they cannot help with FrontPage problems and have left them hanging. This is frustrating no matter how much or how little you have paid, but it becomes a more serious problem if you have paid for a year of hosting in advance.

The first step in troubleshooting publishing problems is to determine whether it is a server issue or a user issue. You cannot do this alone. You can only do it with a server administrator who will test the installation of the extensions and then look at the results on the server (which is not like looking at the site on the web) if the site still does not publish or publish correctly.

I have created test areas on the Cybergalleries servers to do this for you and will do it free of charge. Here's what you'll need to do: First you must contact me for a publishing destination (the URL you will be test-publishing to) and a username and password to use. You can get these in about 2 minutes generally if you click me and ask for them. You'll then publish your site to this new destination and let me know when you've done it. This will allow us to determine if the problem is in your web server or in something you have done. Often I will be able to see immediately what the problem is if it is, in fact, user error. 

Using FTP to publish

You do not have to publish your site directly from FrontPage. You can use an FTP client (program) to publish your site. If you are publishing to a server that does not have FrontPage extensions installed this is how you will do it (unless the server includes their own web-based software for you to upload from).

First, be sure that your hosting account includes FTP access. Any decent account will but we have found lately that some FrontPage enabled accounts are not including FTP access. This is totally unacceptable.

If you are also working with cgi scripts this is a good way to work because FrontPage and cgi do not always mix as well as they should. Using an FTP client gives you much more control over the publishing of the site and allows you to see what files are on the server and where they are. This can be very useful in troubleshooting problems. If you are planning to do sites for clients it is imperative that you become familiar with an FTP client such as WS_FTP by Ipswitch (www.ipswitch.com). This is the standard in FTP software and the one we support. The cost is around $35.

We have recently discovered another excellent FTP client that is free. You can get it at: http://www.renex.com/  Be forewarned that the site is very geeky but the software itself is quite easy to use. Be sure to register the software (which is also free) as you'll need the added features included with the registered copy.