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Converting a FrontPage site to a static site

The Problem:  Washington State University has limited resources to support FrontPage. While HTML is supposed to be a universal system, operating on any server and displaying on any browser, Microsoft has created the FrontPage system as a proprietary environment. A page produced for a FrontPage server might not display in all of its glory when moved to a non-FrontPage server. Additionally, the officially preferred HTML program at WSU is Macromedia Dreamweaver. Support is more readily available for Dreamweaver.

The Solution: To convert a FrontPage site to a regular site, use an off-line browser to download and save the site to your hard drive. Dynamic elements are presented to browsers as static elements, so you can painlessly move an entire site from a FrontPage server to an open standards server.

The Tool: I have found JOC Web Spider to be a quite effective solution for converting FrontPage sites to static sites. You can download a fully-functional trial version for the PC at http://jocsoft.com/jws/jwsdown.htm. (For Mac and other solutions, search sites like Tucows and Download.com for "offline browser.")

Instructions for use:
Open JOC Web Spider and create a new "file." Add an entry (URL) by clicking Edit, Add Entry. Enter the starting URL and a description at the "Starting Address" tab. Click the "Filters" tab. Under Quick Filter, click "Site (All)." Close this window by clicking "OK."

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Save the file. You are now ready to begin downloading. Select "File, Update Pages," or click the blue globe in the tool bar. JOC Web Spider gives you a running tally of how many files it has discovered, and how many it has downloaded. If it fails to download any files (e.g. due to a broken link), this will be noted under "Fail."

You can now locate the local version of the site in your Base Download Directory. Don't forget to carefully review the pages before posting online. There is always the chance that something went wrong in the download procedure, and you might want to make corrections and updates.

Things to watch for:
JOC Web Spider doesn't download images specified in JavaScript code. This means that if you have mouse roll-over images on your pages, you will need to manually download these graphics.

JOC Web Spider can only download up to 99 layers. This should be adequate for all but very large sites.

Spiders discover pages by following links. If you have a page, or whole section, on your Web site that exists as an island, without any inbound links that can be found from your starting page (aka, Web Spider "Entry"), that page or section will not be downloaded. You can remedy this by adding an entry for a page from such a section (Edit, Add Entry).

While you can create a static Web site from a FrontPage site using the above method, the pages will still be contaminated with tons of now-useless and non-functional FrontPage tags. To clean these from your site, use the Dreamweaver Extension Clean Up FrontPage HTML Sitewide.

If you use JOC Web Spider, please let me know how it works for you!

Have a Web
question?
Ask Bob Hoffmann