Recent Web Site Problems *

*  If you're not interested in the technical problems, please skip to the paragraphs in red, below.

1.

Background

For the past seven years, I've used Microsoft's FrontPage web development package to write and develop the EdinPhoto web site, and have used Fasthosts to host the site.

Until about ten days ago, all went well, but I found, on September 19, that I was no longer able to publish any more changes to the web site. I told Fasthosts, who investigated and told me.

(1)  FrontPage Server Extensions for the web site, held on their servers had 'gone down'

(2)  They had not been able to get FrontPage Server Extensions to work again.

(3)  The reason for (1) and (2) above was the number of files that I have on the web site.  It is only reasonable to expect FrontPage Server Extensions to work reliably on sites that have up to 8,000 files, and I have 83,000 files on my site!  So I should look for a way to develop the site without using FrontPage Server Extensions.

2.

Should I start using Expression Web?

After doing some reading and exchanging information through the OutFront web forum, over the past week, I've decided:

-   to move to Expression Web and Cascading Style Sheets to develop the web site.

-   to publish the site using  FTP, rather than the proprietary 'FrontPage Publish' method.

I'm assuming that moving to Expression Web will be an easier learning curve for me than moving to Dreamweaver.

Expression Web is really just a further release of Microsoft's FrontPage program.  However, Microsoft appear to be targeting Expression Web at professional web designers, rather than amateurs, so Expression Web has been designed to make more widespread use of industry standard methods, and some of the features that have been widely used to date in FrontPage will no longer be available in Expression Web.

3.

Topics to Consider

In particular, I believe that:

-  FrontPage search, guest book, page count and other features that rely on  FrontPage Server Extensions will no longer be available if the site moves to Expression Web.  (Fortunately, I no longer use use any of these FrontPage features.)

-   I'll need to use Expression Web's Cascading Style Sheets, rather than FrontPage Themes to get the background pages and the text fonts and colours to appear the way I want them. It may take me a little while to get these working properly.

-   I'll need to upload an add-on program in order to be able to continue to use the FrontPage 'include page' feature.  I've used 'include pages' throughout my web site, so it is vital that I find a way of ensuring that they continue to work.

-   FrontPage Shared Borders is another feature that will not be supported Expression Web. I am currently using FrontPage Shared Borders to provide the links back to the home page and to other parts of the web site that appear at the top and bottom of each page.  I'm still working on how I might be able to do that in the future.

4.

What Next?

Fasthosts (with my agreement) removed my web site from their servers early yesterday, September 29.  So, since then the site has not been available through the internet.  This has been done to allow me to try to publish the site using FTP, and see what it looks like.  I plan to make my first attempt to do that tomorrow, October 1, but it may take almost a day for the site to publish, even if all goes smoothly.

Meanwhile, I apologise for any inconvenience.  It's not a situation that I like being in!  I much prefer spending my time on my photography and on updating the content of my web site, rather that on trying to understand and fix technical matters!

5.

UPDATE

October 4, 2008

Implementing 4 above appears to have been broadly successful.

The site can now be viewed again on the Internet.

-  Peter Stubbs:  September 30, 2008.