FrontPage makes form creation simple by providing form processing capabilities within the server side extensions installed on a Front Page enabled account.  What does that mean?  Without Front Page, you would need a special script to process the data received by the form.  Front Page also provides tools to make creation of the form itself easier.  So how do you create the form?  Here we go....

Front Page provides pretty good instructions in their help section on creating and configuring a form, so you might want to head there.  But we'll also provide the basics here.

Plan Ahead
Save yourself headaches on the backside and do a little planning before you start to create your form.  Nothing is worse then getting halfway through and realizing you've forgotten something important or that the layout just isn't working. 

Decide the purpose of your form and what fields you will need.  (Keep in mind that any type of form which asks for sensitive information like Social Security Number or Credit Card Number should be Secure through SSL).  Make a list of the fields you will need and think about what type of fields each item may be.

Field types:
One-line text box - Used to collect a small amount of text, such as a name, street address or phone number.

Radio buttons - Used when you want the site visitor to select only one option from a group such as a yes or no question, or shipping options.

Scrolling text box - Used to collect one or more lines of text, such as a comment. This field scrolls to accommodate varying amounts of text.

Drop-down menu - Used to present the site visitor with a list of choices.  You can configure a drop-down menu to allow one or multiple selections.  This is great for limiting the answers a visitor can provide.  Example - You want a visitor to select their favorite season.  Instead of putting in a text box where someone could misspell or put in something strange, you provide a dropdown with options Summer, Spring, Fall, Winter.

Check box - Used for optional items. The site visitor can select or clear the check box. They can also select multiple items.  Example - asking visitor about their interests or hobbies.  They can check all that apply.

Push button - Used to let site visitors submit the form after filling it out, clear fields by resetting the form, or run your own custom scripts.

Onward and Upward
Once you know what fields you need and what type they are you can go ahead and start building the form.  Front Page offers some special form types which can be included in your pages such as Discussion Group forms and Guestbook forms.  More details about those can be found in the Front Page Help section.  We're just going to cover the basic Information Gathering to Email form here since that's the one most commonly used.

There are two methods for creating your form.  One is to go to File, then New, then Page.  A Window will appear listing various page types.  One option is the Form Wizard.  The Form Wizard asks you several questions and then creates a blank page containing your form when you've finished.  If you're new to site design or looking for a quick and easy option the Form Wizard is probably a good choice.

The second option is to insert a form into a new or already developed page.  This method requires you to build the form piece by piece.  It also allows you to create exactly what you need.  To create a form this way you go to Insert, then to Form, then to Form again.  This creates a dashed line rectangle with two buttons inside (Submit and Reset).  This is the outline of your form and all of your form components need to be placed within the dashed outline.  Save yourself some swearing now and as soon as Front Page creates the dashed outline hit your enter key once or twice to create some space within the box.  Trying to get your cursor back in front of that Submit key later can be maddening.

Once you've created the dashed outline form you need to add fields into it.  If you go back to Insert and then Form you will notice in the side menu that pops out there are options for various form fields.  Select the field type you would like to insert and click on it.  Voila, it appears inside your form wherever your cursor was.  Another tip here...it's best to type in the field labels before you actually insert the field, it's that cursor thing again.  For instance, if your first field is name, type Name: then go to Insert>Form>One-line Textbox and insert the textbox where the visitor will type their name.  Continue adding fields until the form looks the way you want and includes all the fields you need.

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