January 5

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Migration from Frontpage to Expression Web on Linux/Unix servers

By Christopher Mendla

January 5, 2008


Last Updated on December 4, 2019 by Christopher G Mendla

It’s getting to the point where we really have to move off Microsoft Frontpage for web design. I know a lot of people panned FP, but it did allow us to create sites that got rankings easily and efficiently. The way it handled Navigation was excellent.

The problem in migration is that
(1) Eventually hosts will discontinue Frontpage extensions
(2) Functionality that was in Web components in FP will require .net on the server
(3) Linux/Unix hosting does not include .net.

The solution seems to be an open source project involving Novell called Mono http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page . Mono is supposed to provide .net functionality between 1.0 and 2.0 on Linux boxes.

If you can install it, or get it installed on your hosting, then you should have a lot more functionality without needing to move to a Windoze host. I have a support ticket into one of our hosts now asking if they plan to implement it or if I can install it on my virtual machine.

I don’t think that current FP users and hosting companies really understand the impact of this. If you migrate from FP to EW and are designing new sites, you will have extremely limited functionality on linux/unix hosting. The easy solution would be to move to windows hosting which I don’t want to do for a number of reasons.

If anyone has tried Mono/ew/*nix, I would appreciate it if you could share your experiences in the comments.

NOTE – if you do go the MONO route, check out their vulnerabilities page. You will be opening up a few possible holes.

Christopher Mendla

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