Bob and Betty Rains breed, raise, and train Paso Fino horses in northern California's Ojai Valley. Rancho Fino is dedicated to a breed descended from the steeds ridden by Spanish Conquistadors centuries ago. The name Paso Fino is derived from a Spanish phrase that translates as "the horse with the fine walk," and Paso Finos are renowned for their unusually smooth and graceful gait.

When it was time to promote the ranch online, Rancho Fino handed the reins to Web designer Robert Dianella. Dianella, who published his first site by using Microsoft FrontPage 98, has designed more than 50 Web sites since then.

Now using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003, Dianella continues to improve his own skills as he works closely with clients to build sites that use Microsoft Office Access databases. The end results are dynamic sites that change continually. "I've learned how to use the sites that I've built to provide technical solutions for their owners," Dianella explains.

While working on the Rancho Fino Web site, Dianella says, he was able to "make their digital location as important to their business as their physical location."

Web site requirements

Dianella explains that the main purpose of the Rancho Fino Web site was to showcase the ranch and its stock of show horses, brood mares, and stallions. At the same time, Rancho Fino needed to create an online vehicle to directly market and sell the horses by using images, video, and text.

FrontPage features

Dianella likes to work in FrontPage Split view, which allows him to "see both the design of your site and the code behind it."

Among Dianella's favorite FrontPage 2003 features is the Database Interface Wizard, which he has used on many sites, including ranchofino.com. "It is a marvel," Dianella says. "The Database Interface Wizard takes you step by step through the process of connecting the database to your results page. While the results page can look cumbersome after you leave the wizard, it's very easy to move the results fields to fit any format you like."

With the Database Interface Wizard, Dianella was able to create a site where the owner logs on by using a browser and updates the database in real time. "This is a huge benefit for organizations that have several people responsible for updating information," Dianella says.

Dianella also touts the File Upload feature, which helps him get clients directly involved with maintaining a site. "By using the File Upload component in conjunction with the Include Page component, the client can create a page of text — for example in Microsoft Word — save it as a Web page, and upload to the server," Dianella says. "The Include Page component then inserts this information into the appropriate spot, so the client can upload new text or graphics as often as necessary."

More recently, Dianella worked with the Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9 Series and FrontPage to convert a digital video of a horse into a Windows-based streaming video file and then add it to the Web page.

Dianella says he looks forward to taking advantage of additional FrontPage 2003 features as he develops new sites. "The ability to extend FrontPage 2003 to work with XML data–driven Web sites and with SharePoint," he notes, referring to Microsoft Windows Sharepoint Services, "gives developers the ability to create powerful, data-driven sites significantly faster than ever before," he notes.

Additional tools

• Microsoft Office Access 2003
• Microsoft Office Word 2003
• Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9 Series

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