FW:Data View Web Parts and Ghosting in SharePoint Version 2

Every now and then I hear people talking about how they'd like to use FrontPage to build custom Data Views but they don't want to un-ghost their pages by using FrontPage.

A few thoughts:

1. Ghosting is bad.  I wrote a post on this earlier this year
2. Just opening a site in FrontPage will not un-ghost your pages
3. Just clicking save in FrontPage will un-ghost your page (even if you haven't made any changes)
4. Any Web Part Page created in a document library is un-ghosted by default - so it is ok to open it in FrontPage

I love the Data View Web Part and I try to encourage people to use it because of the powerful things you can do with it.  Here's the process I usually walk people through:

1. Create a new Document Library called "Pages" and set the document template to Web Part Page
2. Create a new document (Web Part Page) and choose an appropriate Layout Template
3. Open FrontPage and open the web of the Document Library you just created
4. Browse to and open the page you just created
5. Select a Web Part Zone and choose Data --> Insert Data View from the menu bar
6. Insert the Data View you would like
7. Save the page in FrontPage and open it in a browser
8. Switch to Design Mode (Click "Modify Shared Page" and choose "Design this Page")
9. From the Data View Web Part's context menu, choose Export and save the .dwp file
10. Browse to your default.aspx page and import the .dwp file (Click "Modify Shared Page", "Add Web Parts", and choose "Import.")

Once this process is complete, you will have a custom data view on your home page without un-ghosting it!