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Tutorial: Using FrontPage with Radio Weblogs
Integrating FrontPage files into your Radio theme
Bet you thought I'd never get around to the really cool stuff didn't
you? Well here it is but be prepared. It goes against everything you
know about the structure of an HTML file.
Integrating your files in to your Radio Theme isn't very difficult, it just
requires you to un-learn basic HTML. First copy all of your FrontPage
files into the new Category folder you created. It will be listed under C:\Program
Files\Radio UserLand\www\categories.
You can use Windows Explorer to do this or you can save them directly from FrontPage
by choosing File, Save As and browsing to the directory above.
| Caution |
During the steps in this section you should Exit and Shut Down
Radio so your files aren't automatically upstreamed before you're
finished.
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You can now close FrontPage. Open Windows Explorer and browse to the
directory where you placed your files and follow the steps below:
- Rename all of your files from .html to .txt
- Open each file in Notepad and add the following as the very
First line of the file:
#title "Creating Files and Folders with FrontPage"
- Substitute what's between the quotes with the actual title
of your page. The # symbol is a special character in UserLand Content Management.
To quote from Dave
Winer's article:
In the example above, by putting it [the
#title] at the beginning of the first line, we're telling Radio that the line is a directive, which means it will be processed in a special way. The processor takes the name following the # as the left-hand side of an assignment statement, and the value that follows it, separated by a space, as the right hand side. This value is then accessible to all scripts that run while the page is rendered.
These are called #attributes, which is pronounced "pound sign attributes." When you hear other developers refer to #attributes, now you'll know what they mean.
- The next step is to REMOVE, that's right, I said remove, all of the
tags from <HTML> to <BODY> and then remove everything from
</BODY> to </HTML> so that all you have left is the #title line
and the code for your page. This allows Radio to "render"
the file though your templates (see Side Bar).
Once you've done this to all of your files you're ready to publish (upstream)
them to your Weblog and see how they look. Simply open Radio (remember I
told you to close it at the beginning of this section) and it will detect the
new files and upstream them to your Weblog.
| Side Bar |
[From
Radio UserLand for developers]
What happened? First, Radio saw that it was a text file. Since text files are plain and uninteresting, it decided to "render" it through a template.
So your little document, with no HTML, has turned into a beautiful Web page, and you've done almost no work. In fact it's less work to get a beautifully rendered page than it is to create a simple hard-coded HTML page. This is the leverage of content management.
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© Copyright 2003 David Berry.
Last update: 1/20/2003; 8:30:51 PM.
All products and company names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
Microsoft® and FrontPage® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
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