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12. .map File

Keep NotePad open. While you're still in NotePad, open the .map file (double-clicking doesn't work for the .map file). Go to File | Open. You may have to change the file type drop-down box to "All Files" in order to "see" the .map file. Open the .map file. It should look like this:

Create a Navigational Structure

First, we decided on a navigational structure for the BabyBlue web. It's pretty simple. (You can do this in your head -- we just included the picture to help you.)

Terminology:
Top Level: the level the Splash page is on.
Level 1: the level that Read Me! and Home are on. 
Child Pages: Read Me! and Home are child pages of the Splash page. Family, Photos Page 1, and Photos Page 2 are child pages of Home.
Parent Page: The page that the child pages are connected to. Splash page is the parent page of Read Me! and Home. Home is the parent page of Family and the photo pages.
Level 2: the level that Family and photo pages are on.
Level 3, 4, etc.: if any of the level 2 pages had child pages, the next level would be called Level 3, and so on.
 

Edit the .map File

If you look at the computer.map picture, you'll notice that each line is broken up by commas (,). 

We listed the pages in the order that they appear on the navigational structure: from left to right, going from top to bottom (don't worry about the structure info numbers yet). You don't have to list the default.htm page because that's automatically included. So our babyblue.map file started out like this:

1,readme.htm,Read Me!
2,home.htm,Home
3,family.htm,Family
4,photo.htm,Photos Page 1
5,photo2.htm,Photos Page 2

Now for the structure information numbers:

• Top Level pages (besides default pages) don't need any numbers. If you look at the computer.map picture, you'll see that Read Me! and Contact Us don't have a number at the end of the line. This means that they will be on the same top level as the default page. (And it also means that Read Me! will show up before the Contact Us page.)
• Level 1 pages need to have "1000" after them. For BabyBlue, our level 1 pages were Read Me! and Home. Now our babyblue.map file looked like this:
  
  1,readme.htm,Read Me!,1000
  2,home.htm,Home,1000
  3,family.htm,Family,
  4,photo.htm,Photos Page 1
  5,photo2.htm,Photos Page 2
   
• Level 2+ pages will have two numbers after them. First comes the line number of the parent page. Second comes the level number (in this case, 2). In this example, Family and the photo pages are child pages of Home. Home is on line 2. The current level is also 2. So our completed babyblue.map file looks like this:
  
  

In the example of the computer.map file, you can tell that Products and Support are child pages of line #4 (Services) and are on level 2, while About Us, Services, Links, and Jobs are on level 1.

Finally, save the .map file. Your web template is done! Test it by creating a new web. You may need to make a few changes in this new web, then Copying and Pasting the .htm files into the web template folder. (If you change the .htm files in the web template folder in FrontPage, FrontPage will add those extra folders into your web template folder. This was a problem described on page 8. That's why we have to copy and paste the .htm files into the web template folder.) If you decide to add any images, you will have copy the images into your web template folder, update the .inf file.

Back: .inf File