FrontPage Good for Business Website?

[LAS in STL]

Please bear with...I do have a question!

At my small company, one of my co-workers and I inherited maintenance of a
customer support website. The website content exists partly in HTML and
partly in Cold Fusion and was written by some third party person who is no
longer in the picture. The site is hard for us to update; we have modest
HTML skills and end up basically writing bits of HTML code in FrontPage 2000
or Notepad (these are the only tools we have). We then paste the revised code
into a tool that puts it on the website, on the proper page. We cannot
restructure the site per se; we can only change content.

We are now in the process of re-creating the website in HTML using
FrontPage. We don't have Cold Fusion and are turning that code into HTML as
well. We have improved the structure and will now have better, easier access
to the content, meaning we can update it more easily, and on a monthly basis.

QUESTION: If we upgrade to FrontPage 2003, and learn some basic Javascript
programming, will that likely be sufficient for completing and maintaining
our website, going forward? As I said, we only update the site about once
a month.

I've read about other software pgms that are considered outstanding for
creating websites. But most of those programs are a lot more expensive than
simply upgrading to FP2003 from the somewhat clunky FP 2000. We'd just as
soon stay with FP for that reason.

Are there many folks in these forums who are successfully and happily using
FP2003 to create and maintain their business websites? Any caveats, if we go
that route?

Many thanks for your help.

 

[Kevin Spencer]

Hi LAS,

FrontPage is an excellent toolset for HTML and web site development,
comparable to the more expensive Dreamweaver in quality, and is used by many
professionals and companies, including Microsoft. However, as with any other
set of tools used by people that build things, such as carpenters, the
toolset doesn't make the product; the builder does. The tools are devices
for enhancing the ability and productivity of the builder. It is important
to remember this, as many people seem to think that tools are a substitute
for knowledge, ability, and hard work.

So, when you ask "If we upgrade to FrontPage 2003, and learn some basic
Javascript programming, will that likely be sufficient for completing and
maintaining our website, going forward?" It is not an easy question to
answer in one sound bite. It's kind of like asking "If I buy a framing
hammer, a finishing hammer, several screwdrivers of different sizes, and
several saws of differing capabilities, will I be able to complete my
building project?" The answer depends on several things. What is the nature
of the project? For example, you mentioned that the site currently employs
Cold Fusion. What does it use CF for? There are certain things that
server-side applications do that client-side JavaScript cannot.

Also, what is your skill set? How familiar are you with HTML? Are you aware
of the differing browser issues? How do you plan to deal with browsers of
different types on different platforms, at differing screen resolutions? Are
you familiar with CSS? Will you be happy with inline formatting tags? How
large is your site? What sort of quality do you want, or are you willing to
settle for? How do you plan to handle accessibility issues, or do you care?
What are your business requirements, that is, what is the purpose of your
web site? How much time and effort are you willing to put into it?

I could go on, but I hope you get the idea. In short, as a toolset,
FrontPage is chock full of tools, just as Microsoft Word is chock full of
tools for creating non-HTML documents. And, as you can see here, it is
supported extremely well. There are lots of people here who can help you
along the way to your goals, and answer any questions you may have about how
to use FrontPage is a timely manner. But when you ask if you can build and
maintain your web site with FrontPage, well, you will have to factor in all
of the issues I have mentioned (and probably a few that I have omitted).

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
Sometimes you eat the elephant.
Sometimes the elephant eats you.