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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Migrating a website from Front Page

unkey monkey - Dec 28, 2006 - 9:40 pm

I have moved from a PC to a MAC. I have a website that I constructed in Frontpage. I want to find a tool that will allow me to at least publish the site from the directories that were on my old machine. Alternatively, I can use Frontpage to publish a copy of the entire site locally, but then I need a tool that could absorb the whole site and then maintain it on the MAC. Does this make sense?

kylesandell - Dec 29, 2006 - 2:02 am

Adobe/Macromedia Dreamweaver (adobe.com) can do this easily, either by downloading the site from your ftp server (or wherever you publish) or with the original directories you can simply copy everything to the Mac. You can edit your pages as though they were written in Dreamweaver at this point. You can download a 30 day trial to see if you like it here: http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/.

Dreamweaver is far superior to Frontpage, and is the standard for web development when coupled with the entire Macromedia suite of software. (Which, unfortunately is very expensive.) I personally use it for maintaining a number of websites.

-Kyle

unkey monkey - Dec 29, 2006 - 2:25 am

Kyle,

Thanks for the response.
The website I am working on is just a personal website for the family pictures. I got Frontpage for free from my ISP. Any chance you know of a free or almost free tool for this? I hate to pay for Dreamweaver for such a small project.

Thanks,

Sheldon

kylesandell - Dec 29, 2006 - 3:07 pm

I don't think that short of commercial software like Dreamweaver you will find much in the way of HTML editing options that can absorb the old site like you had wanted. Taco HTML Edit (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/8636) will let you edit it, but depending your level of coding experience this could be a little bit difficult.

However, it might be easier to simply remake the website in another application. Mac OS X does a great job handling photos, so it's pretty simple. If you import your photos into iPhoto on the Mac, it has a webpage export which will export the photos right into a website for uploading. There are also a number of freeware and shareware programs available for creating online photo albums; just search macupdate.com for for "Photo Album" or "Web Editor." myPhoto (http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/11162) and WebAlbum (http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/12192) both might fit the bill for what you are doing.

Uploading/downloading to your page is as simple as using Fugu (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/8761) or One Button FTP (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/17532).

-Kyle

Natobasso - Dec 30, 2006 - 11:54 pm

Howdy! There are TONS of free editors out there. Here are a few:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=htm...ficial&fr=moz2

And some free and/or shareware options here:
http://www.versiontracker.com/php/se...%7Cosx&x=0&y=0

For ease of use choose one of the WYSIWYG options from the versiontracker.com site (What You See is What You Get).

unkey monkey - Dec 31, 2006 - 12:37 am

Dear Natobasso-

Thanks for the reply. The problem is that these all seem to fall into two groups. The first is basically HTML editors. Allow you to edit or create a single page, but no concept of managing the whole site and all of the connections between pages. The other class are all-in-one site creation for dummies. They make it really easy to create a site from scratch using their templates etc... Easy to create slide shows and photo albums. The problem is that none of these allow you to suck-in an existing site that you have created and then edit, add to it and manage it.

It looks like I will have to recreate the site AGAIN. Each time I change computers or software packages I need to start from scratch. I wish there were a tool that could absorb an existing site and then let you go from there.

Natobasso - Dec 31, 2006 - 1:03 pm

I think the problem is when you say 'free app' you're going to be lacking in features.

However, as the previous tech had mentioned, Dreamweaver is a marvellous choice for what you need to do since it has ftp and file updating built in.

If you really want to get technical, you can just copy all your site files to your computer via ftp (if you don't already have a copy of your site on your computer) and then upload all those files to your new server. Then you can simply use one of the HTML editors to make updates to your pages.

Natobasso - Dec 31, 2006 - 1:42 pm

I think the problem is when you say 'free app' you're going to be lacking in features.

However, as the previous tech had mentioned, Dreamweaver is a marvellous choice for what you need to do since it has ftp and file updating built in.

If you really want to get technical, you can just copy all your site files to your computer via ftp (if you don't already have a copy of your site on your computer) and then upload all those files to your new server. Then you can simply use one of the HTML editors to make updates to your pages.