Retirement of FrontPage Extensions Support

All things must end, and so following years of maintaining support for the Microsoft FrontPage Extensions (long after the end-of-life of the original software) we are being forced to retire these features. FrontPage enjoyed a relatively long run in the software world, from 1997 until 2006 when Microsoft replaced it with the web development tools in Visual Studio and the Expression Suite.

However, continued use has been on borrowed time since then, as for over 6 years now, Microsoft has not been providing vendor support, fixes, security-patches or updates for these Extensions. As time has gone on, more and more issues and security flaws have been build up faster than we and the community at large can support.

FrontPage extensions will no longer be available on any cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, or hSphere (linux only) shared hosting account from December 9th 2013.

If you are still using the FrontPage Extensions for uploading or any of the ‘bots’ for your site, they will cease working as of this date.

If you are using FrontPage 2000 or later, you can switch to FTP for publishing (see https://www.astutium.com/knowledgebase/687/How-do-I-publish-using-FTP-with-FrontPage.html in the Knowledge Base for more details).

If you are using a version older than 2000, you will need to replace this with a modern web site editor (FP2000 was discontinued 11 years ago !)

Microsoft has been offering the last version of their Expression Web product for free for the last 5 years, at http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=36179 (please note, this version comes with zero support and provides options that are not suitable for linux-based hosting), or you are free to select an alternative product.

Expression Web Logo

Expression Web Logo

We regret that we have not been able to continue this support longer, but all things must come to an end.

Permanent link to this article: https://blog.astutium.com/2013/12/retirement-of-frontpage-extensions-support/