Frontpage downfall

[l234244]

Hello all, being a newbie and all that I currently use frontpage 2002 to design my website. Can anyone tell me if there are limitations to this software which can reduce seo techniques. I know it adds alot of extra stuff which HTML validators pickup but dont know if anything else is restricted, maybe being paranoid, thanks in advance!

Cheers

Michael

Sea Fishing Rigs (http://www.seafishingrigs.co.uk)

[dilligaf]

Michael, The only bit that I'm aware of, you're aware of (bloated code)... but much of that can be cleaned up by hand. So does your code validate (seems as though the program shouldn't stop it from validating)?

[wyrickj]

Well I used to be a Frontpage user like 4 or 5 years ago and since moved to Macromedia Dreamweaver. I did hear good things about Frontpage 2003 like it produces cleaner code then any other version. As far as 2002 goes well I have never used Frontpage for any SEO stuff but I have heard failures and sucesses with Frontpage. I would recommend striping the extra code Frontpage generates and delete it. If your not ready to strip FP Code then this website will help you generate clean code http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/frontpage-code-cleaner.shtml.

Hope this helps

[l234244]

Hello guys, I read in some forum that frontpage can add code which produces errors when run on a HTML validator.

Jeff, It appears that the code is quite clean. just quick question Jeff, is there a specific reason you changed from frontpage to dreamweaver. I have heard alot about dreamweaver, having used it yourself could you please just note the pros and cons compared with frontpage.

[laura]

Try this link there's a ton of discussion on this out there http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=Frontpage+vs+dreamweaver

[wyrickj]

Well part of the reason is Dreamweaver is more advanced then Frontpage. Dreamweaver's output renders much better in other browsers then just IE.

Few reasons more I use Dreamweaver is because I am a Professional Web Design company that charges $2500+ and I don't want to disappoint my customers finding I use Frontpage. For the other languages that DW offers I rarely use. For ASP.NET Programming I use VB.NET 2003

[wyrickj]

Since Frontpage is a Micrsoft product of course there going to make it look great only in there IE browser. Well the HTML Validator is right. Microsoft does not follow the W3C Standards and you don't have to but it would make it easier on people that come from non-IE browsers. See Frontpage generates code that looks good in IE and not Firefox or any other browser. Dreamweaver does such great job and generating code that is Multi Platform compatible. But I do design mainly for IE since 95%+ of the Internet World runs IE 5 or newer.

[wyrickj]

Also another reason I use Dreamweaver is because it's easy to intergrate a Flash document inside it. I use Dreamweaver 2004 + Flash MX 2004 all the time so I need something that works well. I know Frontpage can use a flash document but I like DW with Flash a lot better.

[owlcroft]

As I understand it, FP, if used in the "publish to web" mode (I think that's what they call it), makes it impossible to make proper use of the .htaccess file on an Apache-based server, because FP generates its own ".htaccess" files and strews them all over the place, and will complain or fail if you try to put real .htaccess code in one (that has been discussed both ways for some such code, but is just about universally accepted for the all-important mod_rewrite function).

This is, of course, no coincidence--that a M$ product will severely cripple a non-M$ server.

You can, I gather, use FP ok with Apache if you publish locally then use ordinary ftp transfer to upload the work.

But you really, really, really do not want to sacrifice full use of your .htaccess file.

[wyrickj]

Well yes for the FP Server features or what ever you call them like ASP and other elements in FP using a Windows Based server is recommended. Using Windows 2000 + and IIS 5 +.