Microsoft FrontPage
From DreamHost
| Effective June 30, 2006 the Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions for UNIX have been End-of-Lifed. That means that they will never be upgraded in the future to support things like Apache2, for example. FrontPage Extensions may work now, however DreamHost strongly discourages the use of them and reserves the right to stop offering this feature in the future. As of August 08, 2008, Microsoft FrontPage extensions have been completely removed from the Control Panel. If you would like to have FrontPage disabled on your active domain, please contact our support team! |
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Introduction
Microsoft FrontPage is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML and web site administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It is part of Microsoft Office and included in some versions of the popular bundle.
FrontPage used to require proprietary plugins known as the FrontPage Server Extensions to be installed in the target web server for it to work. However newer versions of FrontPage also support the standard WebDAV protocol from the World Wide Web Consortium. There are still a Few features FrontPage provides that require the Server Extensions to be enabled.
At DreamHost FrontPage Server Extensions are supported, though not recommended. You can enable them through the Control Panel. Enabling FrontPage Server Extensions will take a few hours, and changes a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff for your website. The .snapshot backups will no longer be accessible, DreamHost still makes backups - however you must contact support to access them. Also with FrontPage Server Extensions enabled you must access your site through FrontPage's live connect feature - you can no longer access your site via FTP. It is highly recommended you make sure you need the extensions enabled before you do so. To disable FrontPage Server Extensions, you must contact support.
As a WYSIWYG editor, FrontPage is designed to hide the details of pages' HTML code from the user, making it possible for novices to easily create Web pages and sites. Some web developers criticize this approach as producing HTML pages that are much larger than they should be and cause Web browsers to perform poorly. In addition, some people criticize FrontPage specifically for producing code that often does not comply with World Wide Web Consortium standards and sometimes does not display correctly in non-Microsoft web browsers.
Dreamhost Frontpage Details and Support
- Click Here to access our Frontpage troubleshooting page
- How to setup Frontpage 2003 for use with Dreamhost
Alternatives
- Nvu is a free program that provides similiar abilties to FrontPage.
- Macromedia Dreamweaver provides many more advanced features, but carries a hefty price tag.
External links
- Microsoft FrontPage - home at Microsoft.com
- List of Features that require frontpage extesnions - MS KB Article "Lists of components in FrontPage 2002 that require FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions"
