Using FrontPage and ZenCart.

[Vger]

Some more disadvantages of using FrontPage.

1. How are you going to preview your changes in your Zen Cart website in your FrontPage web on your computer? FrontPage doesn't display dynamic php pages by default. There is an uncertified add-on called PHP Rocket, but this has very limited functionality.
2. FrontPage is incredibly slow at uploading changed files, especially image files - FTP wins every time.
3. FrontPage injects code into every .htaccess file telling itself (and the website) to ignore those files - so you lose all of the functionality that can be gained from using .htaccess. For instance, you couldn't use Ultimate SEO URL's with FrontPage. This is not a problem if it's a Windows server anyway, but if it's an Apache server with FrontPage extensions installed then you're stuffed.
4. If you update and upload any changed files and don't use FrontPage to do it then those files will be out of sync with your FrontPage Web and FrontPage will never update them ever again.
5. FrontPage writes rubbish html code. It looks like it's been written by a monkey on speed.

Vger

[everyth5]

A big thanks to everyone for their advise. Unfortunately I spent alot of time, or should I say WASTED, making my website with FrontPage. Oh well, better to learn now than later.

I tried to make my site with ZenCart but am having a heck of a time with modifications. It is difficult to follow the flow of everything when some of (MOST)the file names don't make sense to me. I have tried to follow some of the advise here about what to do first but some of it still is over my head.

Can anyone give me suggestions as to where to start??? I have alot of things already uploaded and changed but it seems that the more I do, the more of a mess I am making. Should I start over from scratch and then follow the instructions here?

[Vger]

A good place to start would be here:
http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

This will give you an insight into how Zen Cart works and how to modify it.

Vger

[bobdog]

Some more disadvantages of using FrontPage.

5. FrontPage writes rubbish html code. It looks like it's been written by a monkey on speed.

Vger

LOL!

I once had to take a medical website created in FrontPage and rewrite the ENTIRE html just so I could edit the site.

[ladysaat]

5. FrontPage writes rubbish html code. It looks like it's been written by a monkey on speed.

Vger

Guess I'd better step away from Dreamweaver then (in addition to FrontPuke) also... I think in my case the ah, operator.... is the one whose making things look like they came from a smack monkey!

[robax]

wow, what a load of utter rubbish and misinformation in this thread. hah

[Merlinpa1969]

robax, why is it a load of rubish,

front page adds line ending marks which php can not correctly interperet
it also has a tendancy to add white space at the end of a file,
depending on the server setup this causes an issue.

now it dosnt always happen but it happens more than enough to warrant the answers givin here.

If you have not had these issues with frontpage, that is great and I hope you never do.
but there are alot of very experienced folks here that agree that frontpage is not the best solution for use in php aplications.

[kuroi]

Yes I'm curious too to know why the advice posted here is misinformation and rubbish.

Vger and Merlin both offer web hosting services, so will no doubt have had first hand experience of the problems that Frontpage causes.

As a web designer I have had to deal with the incredibly bloated and non-compliant code that it produces and the mess that it can make of a server. So my only solution when asked to rework or refresh a Frontpage-built site is to rebuild it from scratch, making it more easily maintained and much faster loading.

The only plus point that I can see for Frontpage is that it can make it relatively easy for web design novices to publish personal pages.

[Vger]

If you want to publish an html based website and have little knowledge of the internet then use FrontPage if you must. The comments about 'bloated code' are perfectly true. I can take any html page writen in FrontPage and reduce the code content by between 80 and 90%.

When used with PHP based sites there's no benefit to using it, and plenty of downsides. With HTML you can preview the site, with PHP you can't, unless you install the PHP Rocket add-on, and that has very limited functionality. You get much beter functionality for previews with DzSoft PHP Editor - and it's a plain text editor which does not apply text formatting (which FrontPage does).

With FrontPage image uploads are notoriously slow, and if you ever upload/update any images/files using FTP and not FrontPage then FrontPage will fail to update/upload them from that date onwards.

FrontPage disables .htaccess files - not a problem if you are hosted on a Windows server, but if you use FrontPage extensions installed on an Apache server then it is a problem. You can't use URL rewriting for one thing.

I could go on, and on, and on about the many failings of FrontPage - but I don't have the time to catalogue them all.

Vger

[Merlinpa1969]

I have just got to voice my biggest gripe with frontpage

its

MICROSHAFT