Migrating a FrontPage Discussion Web?

[Steve Mayman]

Sorry if this has been asked 1000 times before, but I have our office
intranet in a FrontPage discussion web and with the march of technology this
is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. It was being run on an old
XP machine with a PWS and front page extensions. Microsoft seems to have
abandoned both. The old machine died, and I am having trouble getting it up
and running again.

Two questions:
1. What is the best way to get this web running again on a new machine (I
have the web backed up on CDs)?

2. Seeing the writing on the wall, does it make more sense to migrate to a
more future-proof platform? If so, how can I migrate to another platform.
All I really need is posting, searching, and hopefully easier editing.

Thanks!

Steve

 

[Ronx]

PWS never ran on Windows XP. Either that was Win 98, or IIS5.1.

You will need Windows 2003 server (which has 2002 extensions for IIS), or
Vista (Business or Ultimate) with IIS7, or Server 2008. FP Extensions for
IIS7 can be downloaded from http://rtr.com

Copy the discussion web from the CD to a folder, remove the read only
attributes from the files and folders, then open in FrontPage.
Publish to the new server.

Or, start again with a different technology and forum - search for Forum
software in the technology (PHP, asp, asp.NET with mySQL, Access or MS SQL
database) which your new server will support and you understand.

Example: http://www.dmgforums.com/default.aspx is a forum for asp.NET 2
(never used it, so this is not a recommendation).

 

[Steve Mayman]

Thanks Ron,

At first I tried to get a server with FrontPage extensions running on a
Vista (Premium) machine, but it has not been quite as simple as it seems
like it should be. I believe I have IIS7 installed properly and attepted to
follow the instructions at
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/134/install-frontpage-server-extensions/ but
no love.

Everything seems to go ok until I try to extend the web site. The
instructions state that I should "Click Start, point to Programs, point to
Administrative Tools, and then click Microsoft SharePoint Administrator to
open the Server Administration page." Unfortunately there is no Microsoft
SharePoint Administrator listed. It has an alternate command-line approach.
When I try that I get the message: "Unable to create IIS AdminBase
interface. Unable to access configuration for Microsoft Internet
Information Server..."

Now I am stuck. Any suggestions. I don't even know where to start
troubleshooting.

Thanks!

Steve