You do know that FP Includes and Shared Borders don't rely on the FP extensions at all, right? You can run those features just fine without.

FYI: Lists of components in FrontPage 2002 that require FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions [support.microsoft.com]

Since FP has been discontinued, you might want to look at its replacement, Expression Web [microsoft.com].

This might impact some as you need the extensions for it to work:

•File Upload

That would just about put me out.

Why are they doing this?

They imply on the phone, (not just to me but I have read in other forums, other people as well) that MS is making them so this. On phone I told them that I did not believe that for one minute.

This morning they sent an update:

"We are sorry to inform you that the e-mail you received on Friday, 15th February informing you of the discontinuation of FrontPage Server Extensions as of 19th February 2008 was flawed. Please be advised that the correct date of the FPSE discontinuation is 26th February 2008. Due to a technical mishap the dates were mixed up."

Bill, we do not want to go to the new MS software and continue on w/ shared borders, and includes as all our page names would change and we have sites with several hundred human created pages and one site has over 8000 inbound links (acc'd to Yahoo). We want .html pages , same file names, etc...not .asp or .net or .php on these re-done pages.

We looked at open source content management software and found that they made the most outrageously bad file names ever.

We are gonna have to work like crazy and just re-build all the pages, in Dreamweaver when it arrives tomorrow, copy/paste style probably. If anyone has any better suggestions I am all ears.

We called our two nearest cities and not one copy of Dreamweaver onhand for sale in either city. Phone order was best we could do.

We do way to many sites to hand code. Just one person full time, me, and one helper half days. She is gonna work full days till we make this conversion...and I offered to pay her an extra bonus.

Bill, we do not want to go to the new MS software and continue on w/ shared borders, and includes as all our page names would change and we have sites with several hundred human created pages and one site has over 8000 inbound links (acc'd to Yahoo). We want .html pages , same file names, etc...not .asp or .net or .php on these re-done pages.

One, as Bill said, if all you need are page includes and shared borders, you don't have to do anything as those functions are not dependent on FP extensions.

Just for background, the way they work is a bit different than php or server side includes. When you save an FP page that has page includes or shared borders, FP hard writes the copy into the page itself, all included or shared content becomes part of each discrete page. This is unlike php or SSI where the server assembles each page on the fly before sending it down the pipes. Heck, with FP includes and shared borders you can FTP the pages -- something I do for small changes -- without invoking FP extensions at all.

Two, there's no reason at all you'd have to change file extensions if you made the switch to Expression Web. You can still use .html with no problem whatsoever.

All that said, it is very strange for a large hosting company to make this change on such short notice. Curious.

well,thanks for all the info, ... we still think Dreamweaver is the best way to go and free ourselves from MS. It is odd that when we first set up an account on 1and1, they GAVE OUT copies of FP for free ! It was not all that long ago.

When we use FP includes, which all our sites use plenty of, and in the browser page source code it says

"<!--webbot bot="Include" U-Include="include-navigation.html" TAG="BODY" startspan -->"

wouldnt that indicate that the inclusion of the navigation include required FP extensions working properly on the server. I know that on occasion when the shared server received some sort of maintenance, i would see one of my sites with no shared borders or includes showing and have to go to the Admin Control Panel online interface and tell it to reset FPSE before things started showing right again.

So I guess I just dont understand how these things would not require FPSE to display.

The Frontpage Server Extensions for Linux and Unix have been End-Of-Life since the 30th June 2006 so you can expect them to be dropped by most if not all hosts by now. Moving to another system is a very good idea and I would encourage you to use something like PHP because you know that it's not going to be suddenly declared 'end of life' leaving you with a mountain of extra unwanted work.

So I guess I just dont understand how these things would not require FPSE to display.

You're simply not listening to what we've been telling you. You don't need FP extensions for page includes and shared borders.

"<!--webbot bot="Include" U-Include="include-navigation.html" TAG="BODY" startspan -->"

That's an internal tag FP uses to process the includes so that they show up in the WYSIWYG. It's a pure HTML comment tag otherwise. Look at the source of your saved pages in a text editor. You'll notice that all of the includes are already saved there. The FP server extensions have nothing to do with them.

OK--I am listening, just not always understanding I think. But I dont have to understand everything do I ? I'll just believe you and that is that. I said what I said based on past experiences , there seemed to be a distinct connection between includes and borders and corrupted FP extensions.
I am sure over next few weeks, I'll figure more of it out. Meanwhile, I just posted to let others affected by this abrupt change at 1and1 know a little extra info that was given to me on the phone by a 1and1 person. I did some searches and found tons of people hollering about this sudden announcement in various forums.

You're simply not listening to what we've been telling you. You don't need FP extensions for page includes and shared borders.

You know, I might have to investigate that further. But I don't believe the FP include methods will work without FP Extensions. From what I remember, when you install a site that uses the FP include method on a server without FP Extensions, those files won't execute. What you end up with is the webbot code showing on the page because it failed to execute.

I know, it is in writing that the FP Includes do not require FP Extensions but I'm not convinced that is the case. Or at least it wasn't in the two or three transfers I saw where the FP Extensions were not on the recipient server. To this day, one of thoses sites still shows the webbot tag instead of the included content.

I may be totally off base with this and I'm an FP power user, go figure. I've just never had to operate without the FP Extensions and probably wouldn't. There are other things going on with those Extensions that are of benefit. All of it has to do with site maintenance, management, editing, etc. Without the Extensions, you lose all the reporting functionality of your editing environment.

P1R, might that be because you usually work on the live site and not a local copy?

P1R, might that be because you usually work on the live site and not a local copy?

Nah, the FP Extensions are required in my editing environment at the browser level. Transferring a site to a new server without FP Extensions would just eliminate that ability. Those webbots are still going to be an issue I think.

<!--webbot bot="Include" U-Include="include-navigation.html" TAG="BODY" startspan -->

That's an internal tag FP uses to process the includes so that they show up in the WYSIWYG. It's a pure HTML comment tag otherwise.

if you don't have a server or browser/user agent looking for those webbots they should be completely harmless.
just as unprocessed SSI directives look like comments to the browser...

P1R I've been using FP about as long as you, but probably not as extensively. I started off with 2 servers, 1 IIS, 1 *nix Apache. Only one had FP extensions. I used FP Includes on both servers extensively.

I dropped FP extensions even from my IIS servers many years ago because I really wasn't using them. Yet, all FP sites continued to use the Includes.

The OP indicated that he didn't want to go to .ASP pages, so I assume he was using FP the same way I had. You are an .ASP guy, I know. Some of your FP tricks in the past wouldn't work for me because I don't use .ASP in my sites. For example, using FP Includes in the <head> of a page will only work on ASP sites. You can't do that with HTML only sites in FP. Removing extensions from your sites might indeed cause some problems, but I don't think it would affect the Includes.

"...when you install a site that uses the FP include method on a server without FP Extensions, those files won't execute..."

Could easily be one of the very good reasons why FP isn't the editor of choice around here.