Indiana University

IU Webmaster

Converting an Account Enabled for FrontPage Server Extensions

Table of contents
Introduction

Due to the retirement of FrontPage Server Extensions on Veritas and Champion scheduled for January 30, 2006 it is necessary that you convert any features of your web site that rely on FrontPage Server Extensions. Failure to do so may result in the breaking of certain components of your web site once the service is retired.

Components that Require Server Extensions
Note: The following may not be a complete list. You should test your account to ensure you address all issues.

There are several "browse time" components of FrontPage that will no longer be available once FrontPage Server Extensions are removed from the server:

Confirmation Field
Discussion Form Handler
Registration Form Handler
Save Results Form Handler
Search Form
Hit Counter
Some Link bar options (2002 client only)
Top 10 List (2002 client only)
List View (2002 client only)
Document Library View (2002 client only)

Two other components have limited functionality without FrontPage extensions:

Scheduled Image (called "Picture Based on Schedule" in 2002 client)
Scheduled Include Page component (called "Page Based on Schedule" in 2002 client)

You can disable these features in FrontPage: go to Tools, Page Options and click on the Compatibility Tab. Uncheck the box next to "Enabled with FrontPage Server Extensions." Features that require FrontPage Server Extensions are now disabled.

However, you may not wish to test this on your "live" site. Instead, you may wish to open a test account that is not enabled for FrontPage server extensions in order to see how your site will respond. This should help you ascertain what components of your web site will need to be adjusted to work after this service is retired on January 30, 2006.

Return to Top of Page

Alternatives to Components that Require Server Extensions

Many of the FrontPage browse time components listed above deal with forms. Transform, a form handling program, can implement many of these features on www.indiana.edu, www.iun.edu, www.iuk.edu, and www.iupui.edu. If you plan to use forms on your Web site without FrontPage Server Extensions, you will want to take advantage of Transform. For more information on Transform, see the Web Form with Transform 3.0: the Users' Guide documentation on the Webmaster's Tools and Guides page.

Here are alternatives for FrontPage Components that Require Server Extensions, listed in the section above:

    Confirmation Field
    After a user submits a simple form, they are generally directed to a confirmation page. FrontPage uses Confirmation Fields to generate the variable data on its confirmation pages.

    To generate a Confirmation page with Transform:

    1. Create a Transform template
    2. Create a success-response section for your template
    3. Create a confirmation page in HTML within that section
    4. Use the form field names (e.g., [username] [address]) inside brackets to include variable data.
    5. Point your form to the template file

    If you want to give the users an opportunity to change their data

    1. Generate a form as the confirmation page
    2. Use the VALUE field attribute to pre-set the data inside [ ]
    3. Use a second transform template to store the data upon submission

    Save Results Form Handler
    Generally the purpose of a form is to collect data. The two most common ways to process this data are to append it to a data file or to send it as an e-mail message. Transform, like FrontPage, allows both.

    To create a Save-Results form handler in Transform:

    1. Create a Transform template with a confirmation page
    2. Add an e-mail response section and/or
    3. Add an append -response section
    4. Set the !append-file-name variable
    5. Set the !append-after / !append-before variable (optional)
    6. Insert the [data] and text you would like added to the file

    Registration Form Handler
    The FrontPage registration form handler is used to gather information from users and is often used to grant registered users access to certain files.

    You may implement a "Save-Results" form handler to gather data from your users and modify your access files manually.

    Search Form
    The FrontPage search form allows your users to search your entire Web site for keywords. This component can be implemented with the IU Search function. For more information on the Search function, see the Webmaster's documentation on Create a search form for your site.

    Discussion Form Handler
    The Front Page Discussion form handler allows users to submit comments to an Internet discussion, much like a Bulletin Board Service or a newsgroup. The Bulletin Board Manager is a similar service that is offered on IU's central Web servers. For information on creating and maintaining a Web bulletin board on your www.indiana.edu, www.iun.edu, www.iuk.edu, and www.iupui.edu account, see the Webmaster's Web Bulletin Boards document.

    Hit Counter
     The FrontPage Hit Counter displays a running count of the number of times a particular page has been viewed. A similar hit counter utility is available on the central Web server.

    Database Access
     FrontPage provides tools to build pages that retrieve data from database servers. These tools generate Active Server Pages (ASP), a scripting technology native to Microsoft web servers and not currently available on IU's web servers. If you wish to program this kind of functionality yourself, the scripting language PHP supports database connectivity and is available on www.indiana.edu, www.iun.edu, www.iuk.edu, and www.iupui.edu. The MySQL Database Service is available to all Champion and Veritas account holders.

    If you need an enterprise-level web database service compatible with FrontPage, the Data Management Support unit of UITS provides a web database service on servers running Microsoft's SQL data server, IIS, and Windows 2000. This is a charge-back service. For more information, see the DMS document on the WWW Database Service at Indiana University.

    Scheduled Include and Scheduled Image
    These components let you put expiration dates on text and images. They work within the FrontPage client, but without server extensions they will not automatically update your pages on the server. To use these components on the central Web servers, you must open your web in FrontPage, recalculate hyperlinks, and publish the web for changes to take effect. Currently there is no easy way to automate this function on the central Web servers without writing a CGI application. If you are familiar with Java or JavaScript, you may want to attempt this with a client-side script.

    Return to Top of Page