FrontPage 2002 Tutorials - How to save your Favourites and sort them for Broken links.

by Tina Clarke

(some tutorials cover FrontPage 2000 as well)

Fancy having your IE Favourites or Netscape Bookmarks available on your own site? In that case do the following:

Import Export Open your Browser window and go to File | Import/Export (this will make the Import/Export Wizard pop up.

Click the button marked 'Next' and choose 'Export Favourites' (or bookmarks if you are in Netscape)

Select Export Favourites

Again click the 'Next' button and your favourites are listed, choose the root folder and click the 'Next' button once more. You will now be presented with the address line, which should read C:\My Documents\bookmark.htm by default.

Export to a file or address

TIP: If you want to keep your bookmarks online, since anyone reading this will know the generic name bookmark.htm I suggest renaming the file to something else.

However you can save your exported file anywhere using the browse button. I suggest saving them directly to the FrontPage web you want them in.

The first time just browse to your web and insert _bookmark.htm for the end of the address. Next time all you have to do is browse to the same address.

NOTEs:

1. Why you should use the underscore will become apparent later.

2. You don't have to make a page beforehand in FrontPage this will be done automatically.

Click next and it will ask you to click finish. Next time you come to do this it will ask if you wish to replace the file say yes as your just updating your file with new bookmarks you have gathered.

You may not want your bookmark page to be available to search engines or to show up in your TOC (Table of Contents) So just insert the following meta tag into the html between the Head tags. You can do this directly in the html view by inserting

OR Right click the page concerned, choose 'Page Properties' from the pop up menu under user variables click 'Add'. Under 'Name' insert robots and under 'Value' insert noindex,nofollow press ok twice and they will be inserted for you by FrontPage.

If you have a large amount of favourites or bookmarks you may wish to use a free FrontPage host.

So that the page won't show up in your TOC (table of contents) or FrontPage Search Bot I suggested above naming the file with an underscore ( _ ) FrontPage will not let files with underscores show up in the TOC and Search results.

Check your Favourites for dead links easily with the Broken link Report feature in FrontPage

Best of all you can check out your favourites collection for dead links using the FrontPage Reports feature. Merely select the 'In Page' column to sort the files into alphabetically order and then select all the _bookmark.htm (or whatever you named your file) files. You can do this by selecting the first file holding down shift and then selecting the last file. Or to select individual files hold down the control key and click on those files you want selected.

Sort links in FrontPage reports and check for broken links

NOTE: With FrontPage 2002/03 of course you can copy the report for printing.

You can update your favourites by deleting dead links through the browser Favourites feature. Do this once a week and your Bookmarks will always be up-to-date and fresh. Thanks to FrontPage.

By Tina Clarke

First Published in ABC ~ All 'Bout Computers
Volume 8, January 2002