Microsoft FrontPage® 2000 makes it easy for you to create discussion webs: webs that let visitors to your site discuss topics by posting new articles and replying to articles that have been posted. If your discussion web includes a table of contents page, it's easy for site visitors to follow a discussion thread. A discussion thread is a series of messages that reply to an article on a given subject and are arranged in the order received. Each message in a thread is called an article.

When visitors to your site start a new discussion or participate in an existing one, every article they post is listed on the table of contents page and stored on the Web server as a single file. Generally, you have no need to edit these files; in fact, you can damage their navigation structure if you're not careful. However, in some circumstances, you may want to edit or delete these files. For example, you may want to remove offensive content from a thread. Or, you may want to remove old, inactive threads to keep your site fresh and to free up space on your Web server.

Information in this article will help you safely edit or delete files that make up discussion threads.

Preparing to Work with Discussion Files

If you want to prevent site visitors from posting new articles to a thread you're planning to delete, you can create a new "under construction" page to use as a new entry point for your discussion web. Such a page prevents users from posting new articles while you are working on the files.

To create an "under construction" main page for a discussion

1. In the folder list, right-click the main page for the discussion, such as Default.htm, and then click Rename on the shortcut menu.
2. Enter a new name, such as MainPage.htm.
3. On the toolbar, click the New Page button to open a blank page in Page view, and then type a message, such as This discussion is currently under construction. Check back soon.
4. On the File menu, click Save and then enter the file name you changed in step 1.
   When visitors go to your site, they will see the "under construction" message instead of links that let them post articles.

To make sure that you're looking at a current version of the discussion web, refresh your view of the web in FrontPage by clicking the Refresh button.

To update your view of files on the Web server

1. With the web open in FrontPage, press F5 to update the list of files.
2. If you have any pages open in Page view, click on the page and press F5 to update the view.

Viewing Discussion Files on the Web Server

When site visitors post an article, the article is stored on the Web server as a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) file. FrontPage gives the file a numerical name, such as 00000002.htm, and stores it in a folder called _discn in your web, where n is a number that FrontPage assigns if you've created more than one discussion web. The underscore at the beginning of the folder name indicates that it is a hidden folder. To see the articles in the folder list in FrontPage, you must make files in hidden folders visible.

To display files in hidden folders

1. On the Tools menu, click Web Settings.
2. On the Advanced tab, select the Show documents in hidden directories check box.

You can double-click any of the article files in the _discn folder to open them in Page view.

Important  Do not open or edit the Tocproto.htm file in the _discn folder. FrontPage updates this file automatically; if you edit the file, you can render your discussion web unusable.

Deleting an Article

If a discussion thread includes an article that you want to remove, you must first determine the file name of the article in your web. To do this, you can view the HTML source code while the article is displayed in your browser and note the file name that's displayed in the title bar of the window. Or, if you have the web open in FrontPage, you can search the web for the offending content.

To find file names by searching for text

1. In the Edit menu, click Find.
2. In the Find what box, type the text you want to search for.
3. Under Find where, click All pages, and click Find in Web.
4. In the list of pages that FrontPage finds, note the file name of each page, shown in parentheses.

Once you know the names of the files to remove, you can delete them from your web. FrontPage recalculates hyperlinks so that the table of contents and the Next and Previous links between the articles are not broken.

To remove an article from the web

1. Find the file name of the article you want to remove.
2. In Folders view, in the _discn folder, right-click the file, and then click Delete.

Removing Whole Threads from Your Discussion Web

If no one has added to a discussion thread in a long time, or if you want to make room on the Web server, you can remove whole threads from your web.

Note  You can use Reports view to find files in your web that have not changed in a long time. For information about configuring what constitutes "a long time," type Define older files in reports view on the Answer Wizard tab in the FrontPage Help window, and then click Search.

Because a thread is a series of articles that share a common subject, it is easy to remove a whole thread. If site visitors have typed unique names in the Subject field of the discussion form, you can easily find the file names of articles in a thread by searching for the name of the subject. The subject name appears as the heading of each article.

To find and remove discussion threads based on subject name

1. In the Edit menu, click Find.
2. In the Find what box, type the subject name.
3. Under Find where, click All pages, and then click Find in Web.
4. In the list of pages that FrontPage finds, double-click the first page to scroll through occurrences of the search text.
5. Note the names of files where the search text occurs as the heading of the article (usually formatted as Heading 2).
6. For each file that you find, in Folders view, right-click the file, and then click Delete.

If you're not sure that site visitors used unique subject names, you can use the discussion web table of contents page to find discussion threads.

To find and remove discussion threads using the table of contents hyperlinks

1. View the table of contents page, Disc_tocf.htm, in your browser.
2. In the thread you want to delete, click on a hyperlink to go to an article.
3. With the article displayed in your browser, note the name of the file, and where your browser displays the file URL.
4. Click the Back button in your browser, and repeat steps 2 and 3 for every article in the thread, noting the names of the article files.
5. For each file that you find, in Folders view in FrontPage, right-click the file, and then click Delete.

Reactivating the Web

If you created a temporary "under construction" page as the entry point for the discussion, you need to reactivate the original entry page for site visitors to be able to post articles again.

To reactivate the discussion entry page

1. In the folder list in FrontPage, right-click the currently active entry page, such as Default.htm, and then click Rename on the shortcut menu.
2. Enter a new file name, such as UnderConstruction.htm.
3. Right-click the file you created when you saved the original entry page under a new name (such as MainPage.htm), and then click Rename on the shortcut menu.
4. Type the original file name, such as Default.htm.