FP1: House Icon for Default Page Not Visible after Copy Web

• Microsoft FrontPage for Windows, versions 1.0, 1.1

SYMPTOMS

After you publish (or copy) a Web from one server to another, the House icon that identifies a Web page as the default or home page in FrontPage Explorer is not displayed. This gives the appearance that the Web does not contain a home page.

In addition, if you specify the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to the new server location in your Web browser, but you do not specify the file name of the default home page, the Web browser will show you a directory index instead of the contents of the home page.

NOTE: The House icon appears in the upper-left corner in Outline View in FrontPage Explorer.

CAUSE

This behavior occurs when you use the Copy Web command on the File menu in FrontPage Explorer to copy a Web to another server and the destination server uses a default document name that is different that the current file name. For example, if you are using the FrontPage Personal Web Server and your default home page is called Index.htm, and you copy the web to a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), which is configured to recognize Default.htm as the default home page, then the House icon will not be used to identify the default home page on IIS.

NOTE: This problem also occurs if you use other means of moving the default page from one server to another and the destination server uses a different home page document.

RESOLUTION

After you publish your web to the destination server, do the following:

1. Open the Web in FrontPage Explorer.

2. On the View menu, click Link View.

3. Right-click the link that represents your default home page, and then click Properties.

4. Click the General tab.

5. In the Page URL box, type the new name for the file, and then click OK.

   If you are asked to update other pages that link to this file, click Yes.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was corrected in Microsoft FrontPage 97 for Windows with Bonus Pack. The Publish Web feature in Microsoft FrontPage 97 detects whether the destination server uses a different default document name and if it does, it renames the home page.

MORE INFORMATION

Web servers are configured so that they use a default home page document. When a Web browser requests a specific URL on a Web server, the Web server responds by showing the default home page. If the default home page is not present on the server the server responds by showing a directory listing or index.

The default document names vary among Web server types. The following table shows some examples of default document names used by different server types:

   Server Type                       Default Document Name
   -----------                       ---------------------

   Microsoft (IIS)                   Default.htm
   FrontPage Personal Web Server     Index.htm
   Microsoft Personal Web Server     Default.htm
   Apache                            Index.html