Look how old this is!
I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 18 years 1 month 25 days ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.

If you are a web hosting customer of ours, this is an urgent wake up call. By the end of 2006, your site may no longer function properly unless you act now. Microsoft has already discontinued Unix server support for Front Page, and Windows hosting support is likely not far behind.

Recently Microsoft announced that FrontPage 2003 will be the last version of FrontPage to be released. The product 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 on June 30th 2006.

Many features used in FrontPage websites are based on FrontPage Server Extensions released by Microsoft. Things like form processing, themes, hit counters and even website publishing. These features are collectively known as the FrontPage web-bots, and they are all coming to an end on our Unix systems.

We’ve continued to run the unsupported Unix FrontPage extensions on our servers since June to try to provide as much support for customers as possible, however, we are officially announcing the end, effective January 1, 2007.

Having the server extensions support dropped by Microsoft leaves us in a bad position and we must remove these extensions from the servers to avoid leaving the servers open to a possible attack.

SearchCommander.com plans on removing the FrontPage extensions from all of our Unix servers on December 31st, 2006. After this date, any site using the FrontPage server extensions on Unix at the end of this year will no longer work properly.

We MAY decide to pull support even earlier if any incompatibility or security issue arise, since there will be no further patches or upgrades to fix these issues.

Microsoft has also announced that it will be replacing FrontPage with two new product lines…

These lines are SharePoint Designer, aimed at businesses and teams of developers working on a single site. Expression Web Designer is the other line, targeted towards your average business web designer or home user. Both of these products are based on more standardized code and features than Front Page.

It is very likely that once these two new products are out, the Windows server FrontPage extensions will also be discontinued, so you should stop using them now even on windows servers. Neither of these new products will require or use the features in the FrontPage server extension package.

This puts you in an unfortunate but unavoidable position. Many of our users use FrontPage not only on Unix but also on Windows as well. With Unix support already being terminated and Windows likely to follow, the time has come to convert to more standardized web practices.

There is no upgrade path or any one clear direction for each of our users. Each webmaster will have to determine the best possible path for them to take.

All Unix users will be forced to switch over to Windows hosting within the next 3 months, keeping their existing FrontPage extension sites on-line.

We will then be removing the FrontPage extension controls from the control panel to avoid any new instances of FrontPage being installed.

We are strongly urging all users who use the FrontPage server extensions, Unix or Windows, to standardize their web practices and STOP USING the Front Page extensions at the earliest possible date.

There are several different paths that can be taken for the users of the FrontPage server extensions, and we’ll outline some of them below so you can make an educated decision.

1) Wait For Microsoft Expression Web Design
Users can wait for Expression Web Designer to be released by Microsoft and then convert their existing sites to the new formats and technologies. There will likely not be any built in functionality as there is in FrontPage with its web-bots. We are also not sure if there will be a built in FrontPage converting tool.

Pricing for the software is likely to be around $400 and it is said to be ready for stores by the end of the year. This is just information gathered from various Internet postings so please don’t hold SearchCommander.com to the pricing or release dates.

2) Unix users can move to Windows:
Moving from Unix to Windows is a very viable solution for the time being, and will buy you a little bit of time. We are going to try to continue to support the Windows FP extensions for as long as possible. However, if there is a security exploit for FP we will have to remove the support from Windows as well, and you will be out of luck. Therefore, you need to get off the FP extensions ASAP…

In the event of a security exploit on the FP extensions for Windows, we will check to see if Microsoft releases a patch to fix the exploit. If they do not release a patch for the extensions we will have to pull support for those as well. Please use this option only to buy yourself a little extra time to get one of the other options to work for you. This is not intended to be a permanent solution.

3) Continue Using FrontPage on UNIX, but WITHOUT using the server extensions:
This is always a valid option for any of our users. FrontPage is a decent web design program that will continue to work without the use of the FrontPage extensions. Users can build their websites in FrontPage locally on their computers and FTP them to the server using a FTP client or the built in FrontPage FTP client. Other features like form processing and hit counters will need to be replaced using scripts. There are many places on the Internet to find free scripts for form processing and hit counters that are built using PHP or ASP.

4) Use a web design program other than Microsoft FrontPage:
This is pretty much the same option as #3. There are many other design programs on the market such as Adobe Dreamweaver, or Coffeecup Designer. Many of these programs use standardized web processing and all of them would still require replacements for the FrontPage web-bots.

Each one of these options may or may not be right for you, and there are others too, including blogs and content management systems (CMS) but one thing is certain –

You MUST STOP using Front Page Extensions before the end of this year on your Unix hosting account.

Please evaluate each option above, and decide what is best for you and your website before your site stops working.

Please ask your questions about this here, as blog comments, so that all of our users may benefit form the answers.

Any web hosting support emails about this subject will also be posted here, and I will answer each one personally.
We’re sorry for the inconvenience, but hey, the world is a changing place!

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