Import a Web Site?

[Nicholas Showalter]

I have an existing web site that was originally built with MS
FrontPage and then maintained with some other, unknown program. Now,
the person maintaining with the 2nd software is no longer available so
I'm trying to get control over the website once more.

Can I import the website into bluegriffon and use it to maintain the
website once more?

Thanks!

Nic

[Greg Chapman]

Hi Carl,

On 01 Nov 12 03:08 n8vz <n8...@callsign.net> said:
> I'm also a refugee from FP. I have a site that I built over a
> number of years in FP. I would like to import it into BG so that I
> can clean it up and republish. Is there a way to do this?

My experience is mainly with KompoZer which is a fork of Daniel's
earlier program Nvu although very similar in function and approach to
BlueGriffon. The short answer is almost certainly that you will find
to quicker to start from scratch. You'll also be able to produce a
site that is easier to maintain in the future.

The trouble is FrontPage had many proprietary features that were
developed in the days when MS thought that everyone would sign up to
MSN and it largely ignored W3C standards.

If you post the URL of your site folk could provide a fuller
diagnosis.

Greg Chapman
http://www.gregtutor.plus.com
Helping new users of KompoZer and The GIMP
Still exploring BlueGriffon

[n8vz]

Thanks, Greg.  The site in question is http://www.78ohio.org.  It is a rather large site, as least for me, so starting over seems somewhat daunting.  I've also contemplated making it a WordPress site, but that seems equally challenging at this point.  Any further comments you'd care to make after viewing the site would be appreciated. -- Carl 

[Greg Chapman]

Hi Carl,

On 01 Nov 12 16:54 n8vz <n8...@callsign.net> said:
> Thanks, Greg. The site in question is http://www.78ohio.org. It is
> a rather large site, as least for me, so starting over seems
> somewhat daunting. I've also contemplated making it a WordPress
> site, but that seems equally challenging at this point. Any further
> comments you'd care to make after viewing the site would be
> appreciated. -- Carl

The good news is that the code in the few pages that I selected at
random to examine is a lot more compliant than usual for a FrontPage
site. I suspect most should load without problem into BlueGriffon -
though there were some that had content copied from MS WORD - and
that's never a good idea.

The bad news is that I'd still consider rebuilding from scratch. The
site is very "early 1990s home authored" in appearance, with features
that are avoided by all mainstream sites these days. Perhapas more
important, it has no consistency in site navigation, with many pages
leading to dead ends where it is necessary to use the browser's Back
button to re-engage with the site. It must be fifteen years since I
saw another site like that!

Write to me off-list if you'd like my further thoughts. Most are not
really BlueGriffon support related, so off-topic here.

[Greg Chapman]

Hi Z,

On 08 Jun 13 15:46 "Z. Edgar Hoover" <zedgar...@gmail.com> said:
> So...the answer is "No"? All this discussion of whether to start
> over really doesn't address the question asked.

To quote from my first answer to the OP:

> The short answer is almost certainly that you will find to quicker
> to start from scratch.

The message you quote was giving a fuller answer, after seeing the
site in question, explaining why I gave the initial "short" answer.

[Joeg]

Greg is absolutely correct. Unless a previous site has been hand-coded to modern web standards, BlueGriffon is going to try to 'correct' whatever markup is present. If it uses table for layout, for instance, you will end up with something completely different from the original because many of the layout features in tables have now been removed from HTML and are addressed by style sheets. It is possible to convert an old style site to a modern one, but not with BlueGriffon. You would need a heavyweight text editor with scripting support.