Software Tip

Building professional looking websites can definitely be challenging.

While anyone in the world can learn the basics of html and get an operational site up and running on the internet
making a site that looks attractive can be another story altogether!

The internet abounds with cheap-looking mom and pop sites that look like they were designed by a first year html student.

Do you want your web sites to look like that?

I hope not. Especially when it is so gosh-darn easy to make your sites look more professional using Microsoft FrontPage.

Here are 5 ways FrontPage can instantly make your websites look more professional.

1. High Quality Photos And Clipart Collection - Few people actually know how great the Microsoft Clipart collection is. This collection of images is created and maintained by one of the richest corporations in the world. It absolutely crushes any other collection I've seen on the internet in terms of quantity and quality of available pictures.

Best part...It's free for FrontPage owners!

There are over a million clipart pictures and photos
all searchable by keyword.

And if you have an active internet connection
you can search this online gallery from within FrontPage while you work.

Adding some original looking
nice photographs to each page of your site can instantly take up space
add a professional look. This is better than simply having the affiliate link.

2. The Interactive Button Features - In Microsoft FrontPage 2003
there is a new feature called 'Interactive Buttons'.

Basically
you can choose from over 200 different types of ready-made buttons to use on your website. These buttons look fantastic and can be created and edited with 1 click.

Before you would have to pay a graphic designer or spend hours creating these types of rollover buttons yourself
but FrontPage 2003 does it all for you.

Using these buttons can add a big dose of professional looks to your site in a matter of seconds.

3. Using HTML Tables - It goes without saying that the content of your webpages should usually be placed in some sort of html table. FrontPage makes it easy to create tables and add content
simply by using a button on the toolbar.
You can use this to center the content on your page and create neat looking tables once you get the hang of it (it is easy). This way
your content isn't scattered all around the page.

4. Included Content - This feature of FrontPage allows you to make changes to hundreds of webpages
simply by changing the content of one html page. For example
I mentioned above that you should use the interactive buttons feature to create a navigation system. You can also 'include' this navigation system on all of your webpages with a special feature in FrontPage.

This way
if you want to add another category or link to all of the pages on your site
you simply need to open up one webpage
the 'navigation.htm' page
and change the contents of that page.

The changes will immediately be reflected on hundreds of pages on your website.

You can see this is 10
0
more easy than going through and manually editing the links bar on each page!

5. Web Forms - Using the web forms feature of FrontPage
you can create a feedback form for your website. Not only do these forms look nice
but they also can help you to alleviate your spam problems.

Many a webmaster has paid extravagant fees to other companies for form processing
when it has been available to FrontPage users free and easy for years.

You can create any kind of feedback form in a matter of minutes
and have the results of the form submission sent to any email address that you choose.



To conclude:

I have just given you 5 very valuable tools for creating professional looking websites fast.

While it may not sound like much
consider this:

Let's say you spend $50 and get a nice looking banner graphic for your new affiliate website.

Then you create a neat html table
past in the banner
and use the interactive buttons feature of FrontPage 2003 to create a navigation system.

You can use the same general template for each new page you create (for articles
and other information about the product you are promoting).

After that
you top each page off with a nice looking photo or two from the Microsoft Clipart collection.

Using these basic techniques
in only an hour or 2 you can easily put together a professional looking website site.

You can get more Microsoft FrontPage website building tips via the tips newsletter at http://www.fphowto.com