FrontPage End of Life...

End of Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions Availability - September 2007
As we previously announced in April 2007 via an email to all our customers and in our news and announcement section: Microsoft announced that FrontPage 2003 would be the last version of FrontPage to be released. They have recently released two new products; SharePoint Designer aimed at business and developers and Expression Web Designer designed for your average web designer. FrontPage has reached its “End of Life” with Microsoft. Microsoft also announced that the Unix FrontPage server extensions have also reached their EOL date. The official EOL date for Unix extensions was June 30th 2006.

Some features used in FrontPage web sites are based on FrontPage Server Extensions released by Microsoft. Things like form processing, themes, hit counters and even web site publishing. These features are collectively known as the FrontPage web-bots.

Because of the EOL decision by Microsoft, developers since the announcement are not concerned about compatibility issues with the extensions. As technology grows, the continued support and installation of the extensions limits us from adding new features and continuing to update some of the server side software because of compatibility issues such as Apache 2. The developer of the control panel system we utilize has also announced that FrontPage server extensions are no longer supported. Additionally, the opportunity for a security problem with these extensions running with other updated software could leave our servers vulnerable.

Effective October 31, 2007 we will no longer support the use of Microsoft FrontPage on our servers. The server side extensions will remain on our servers until January 15, 2008 on a use at your own risk basis.

Continue to Use FrontPage
You can continue to utilize FrontPage to develop and publish your web site. The lack of server extensions only limits some of the advanced features of the product. We suggest using the Find feature within FrontPage and search the source code of all you pages for "webbot" without the quotation marks. This will highlight each instance where the code relies on the server extensions. You can see a list of features that rely on extensions in this Microsoft Article. Publishing can be done with the built in FTP application within FrontPage.

Switch to a Different HTML Editor/Site Creator
Microsoft, Adobe and many other commercial companies offer newer versions of web site creation software for you to purchase. These products include the latest features and functionality to make updating your site easy.

Because many in the Scout movement have students (K-12), you may consider your (their) eligibility to purchase the Educational version of these commercial software packages at sources such as CampusTech. Typically the "Educational" version includes all the features of the retail version at a fraction of the retail price.

There are also free programs on the internet such as Komposer that do a nice job.

Switch to a Content Management System or our SiteStudio
Many units like the advantage of using online site building technology such as our SiteStudio or other database driven content management systems. In most cases, there is no need to know code and all site creating and editing is done directly online. There are many options out there if you search Google.

Tips to Continue to Use FrontPage
If you would like to continue to utilize the FrontPage program you certainly can as only some of the features will not work without the FrontPage Server Extensions installed. Here is a list of some of the most common ones and suggested work arounds:

Publishing
Rather than utilize the FrontPage Server Extensions to publish your web site via http, you'll need to utilize the built-in FTP client within FrontPage. If you are not already building your pages with FrontPage on your local PC and then uploading them, you'll need to start as direct to server publishing will not be supported. After you click Publish, change the Remote Server type to FTP and fill-in the information indicated:
Remote Web Site Location = Host Name indicated under FTP User in your control panel
FTP Directory = the domain name you want to publish
You will be prompted for:
Username = FTP Login shown as FTP User in your control panel
Password = Your Password (FTP may be different then control panel password)

Online Form Submissions
This is pretty straight forward. You just need to send the fields collected to a script rather than have FrontPage do it. We like this one for Windows Servers and this one for Unix Servers however there are many similar free products out there. Both of these scripts will collect all the fields on your form and send it to an email address of your choosing. Confirmation pages and emails are also available.

Photogallery
We really like the free CopperMine Photogallery and use it on our own sites. Check it Out

Site Search
Perhaps the best solution is to utilize the Google technology and have them index and supply you with a search your site features. One of the products they offer through their Adsense Program is free code for a search bar. It is customizable and allows users to search the web, your site or any site you specify. Your unit may also make a little coffee money at the same time. This will also help in getting your site indexed by the most popular search engine these days.

Statistics and Reports
We suggest enabling Awstats in your hosting control panel. It's a much better statistics program for your site than FrontPage reports ever was.

Hit Counter
There are many hosted and script based unit counters that work well. We like this one that uses Scout-like numerals to depict the number of visitors. Check it Out

Subwebs and Permissions
You can utilize FTP-Sub accounts available in your hosting control panel if you are using subwebs with different publishing authorities for different parts of the site. This allows restriction of the FTP login account to a certain folder on your site for that particular user.

Automated Menu System
If you are using the FrontPage generated menu system based on the Navigation view and build, you will need to replace that system with a traditional html or java based menu/navigation system. HotScripts is among several script sites that offer many free alternatives.