Expression® Web Design
Losing FrontPage Server Extensions
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Maybe you received an email from your hosting company stating that FrontPage Server Extensions are no longer being supported. Hopefully they will give you a thirty day notice - but some web hosting companies are seeing that "supporting" FrontPage Server Extensions is not as profitable. Unfortunately, Microsoft® dropped FrontPage Server Extensions like a hot potato when it discovered webmasters were looking to develop a website that was valid by the W3 standards (well it did take them a few years).
So now what does a webmaster do? Maybe you have relied on FrontPage Server Extensions to process a simple contact form on your website - this was one of the better (and worse) things about relying on FrontPage Server Extensions. Worse - because your email address was displayed in plain text when you looked at the source code. Better because it was real easy for small businesses to set up a website and have their users contact them. If you have stopped relying on FrontPage Server Extensions, you just need to make sure you are not using any other webbots that require FrontPage Server Extensions. The second, if not first, webbot that most webmasters used was the publishing feature. This is basically where you used http:// instead of the FTP process that is most supported by web hosting providers. Even still today, Expression Web is lacking on its FTP client. You will see Expression Web time out on you when you have made only one change to your website and attempt to rely on Expression Web as an FTP client.
If you are now using FTP to upload / synchronize your website, either with FrontPage or Expression Web, chances are very good you do not need to worry about losing FrontPage Server Extensions. However, if you are still using http as a way to manage your website, you need to look at using FTP before you inform your web hosting provider to turn off FrontPage Server Extensions. You can check out downloading a website with Expression Web and FTP as a guide.
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