Website Woes, Converting from FrontPage to Dreamweaver?
Change, change, change, why does everything have to keep changing?
I’ve had it easy, my daughter-in-law Janine built my website and has maintained it for me for many, many years. It was built using FrontPage software that is no longer made, and worse yet she is no longer available to work on my site. So I am on a quest to find someone who will convert it from FrontPage to current software and then help me learn to maintain and update so that new products will be current, calendar accurate, and news timely. The task seems daunting. I’ve been told that each page has to be re-coded because FrontPage will not convert directly to Dreamweaver. Then I ask, how long will Dreamweaver be a viable software?
The costs of keeping everything current sometime exceeds the income made from the product. I’ve always used a MacIntosh computer and have been through time consuming painful changes from PageMaker to Adobe CS2, and Microsoft Works to AppleWorks. What next? Can’t we see some standardization in the software industry or are they too greedy to make it easier for us?
This is tough for someone from the generation when T.V. was invented and phones were 10-party lines. This whole computer thing has kept me in a constant state of fear and dominated my time for way too many years now. Painting time has been replaced with computer work, updating databases, software conversions, larger and bigger memory, back-up external hard drives, scanning slides of previous paintings, color correcting in Photoshop, and power point presentations instead of slide shows. Endless computer work. But, thanks to the generosity and hard work of Janine, I’ve never had to bother my little head about how to maintain my website. Now, another learning curve.
Time to jump in and test the water, I hope it isn’t like the Polar Bear Jump in Seward in the middle of winter. Brrrrrr! But for some reason, I think it might be worse. I’m asking you, my readers, to keep up the good thoughts for me during this time of transition and learning.
Gail Niebrugge, professional artist and neophyte on the computer
July 20th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Hi Gail, just a suggestion, since you already have your blog on the Wordpress platform, perhaps you can build on it, ie: by adding pages and using a gallery plug-in this would allow you to update everything using your Wordpress admin, similar to when you do normal blog posts. This photographer has done a great job on doing this, if you would like to take a peek: http://blog.joshcolephoto.com/
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Best wishes! CarolC
July 21st, 2008 at 8:54 am
Carol;
Thanks for the suggestion. Since this is all way over my head I’ll check this out and hopefully understand the concept and see if it will work for me.
Gail
August 2nd, 2008 at 6:22 am
Hi Gail:
Boy don’t I know what your talking about. I’m just looking for an update on MS Frontpage and finding it isn’t out there. How has the transition been for you to Dreamweaver?
It looks like the way to go but I sure don’t look forward to all the work to get things transferred over.
JMC
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Hi Jill;
It has been interesting searching for help with this situation. I’ve had all kinds of advice and all kinds of different costs quoted.
I may have found help, and we are working on it at this time. It has taken a bit of discussion and explanation on both of our parts. I’ll post something soon and let you know when we are done and how it worked out. So far I think I’m on the right track.
We are doing the conversion in code that can be read by a number of programs including Dreamweaver. One hurdle is converting the shared border in FrontPage. I’ve been advised that it can be converted using PHP language. It is all Greek to me. the biggest hurdle is that it costs a bunch of money, and in this economy it is not where I’d like my money to go. But, my server my not continue to support FrontPage, so I don’t have much choice.
Gail