Create a Website in Expression Web

Now that you have Expression Web installed and have set up the program following the Setting Up Expression Web and Site Settings tutorials, you are ready to either:

Open a website that you have created in FrontPage. If you are following this route then make sure you have a good backup of the site BEFORE you open it in Expression Web. If you need assistance in Migrating from FrontPage to Expression Web, you can signup for an online class which includes the eBook OR you may purchase the eBook separately.
You can create a new website and start from scratch. NOTE: This tutorial is located on one of our sister sites.
Create a new website using one of the DWT's included with Expression Web. Instructions for this choice follow below.

Create a New Website with Program Templates

Click on any thumbnail to view a larger image.

Step 1:

Start Expression Web > File > New > Web Site

Figure 1: Create New Web Site

Step 2:

In the dialogue box Choose Web Site Tab > Templates
Select the template you wish to use > Personal 2 (or your choice)
Under specify location of the new web site > put cursor in box and delete from the right end up to the slash after MY WEB SITES\ or you can browse to the location where you want the new web created.
Type in the name of your web - use a hyphen rather than a underscore. I use the actual name of my website as the folder name. Click OK

Figure 3: Create new EW Site using EW Template

Step 3:

The new web will be created with all of the pages and folders needed for your new site. The will include the DWT, the home page, and a number of folders.
The home page is named default.htm which I immediately rename to index.html by right clicking on the file > Rename

Figure 4: Rename File

You will be asked if you are sure you want to rename this default.html, the home page of your web site > Click Yes

Figure 5: Confirm file rename

The next dialogue box will warn you there are x number of pages that have hyperlinks to this page > Do you want to update them > Click Yes
All links pointing to that page will be adjusted.

Figure 6: Adjust hyperlinks

Step 4:

The default organization of the files and folders, puts each page in a folder. That is probably NOT how you would want your website organized. I have restructured the site so that every folder has a default html page and folders that are highly unlikely to ever include more than one page have been deleted with their single page moved to the root section of the website. Highlight the file and drag it to the root directory. You can then delete the extra folder.

Figure 7: (Default Folder List)

Figure 8: (Restructured Folder List)

The default doctype used in Expression Web is <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

The templates included with Expression Web contain three different style sheets you can use with each site. Change the links to the style sheet to see which of them you prefer.

Your new web site is now ready for you to being revising the look of and/or adding your own content.

Once you have finished designing your site, you will need to publish it to your server.