Hello,

I am new to LunarPages. but am strongly considering moving again to another host even before my pages get put up here.  The support response time here is very good, and I appreciate that, however I've not been able to get effective help on one very important issue, which is FrontPage.

I've been trying to transfer the hosting of an existing Frontpage web to LunarPages from a different hosting company (USAWebHosting for which support response time has apparently transitioned to "never").  Anyway, I use FrontPage 2000 and wanted to upload my site, even if only to the "holder" page because (1) I want to make sure it will really work before giving the other hosting service the boot and (2) I don't want there to be a time between when the DNS first points my site name toward LunarPages and when I haven't anything there other than LunarPage's "welcome" page for them to run into!

But I have had no luck with that, and have apparently run the support techs out of patience (the last one more or less told me to stop asking about this issue, and gave me microsoft's support link!). 

Two problems come up:
(A) When I try to publish to the address location they gave me (not my url, but a temporary one), FP tells me there aren't any FP Extensions there and refuses to go further (never even asking for my name and password).  I asked them about this about a dozen times and keep getting the same response (which doesn't work for me).
(B) I read in support's instructions that FP has to run in "Passive Mode".  Well I went to the support.microsoft.com site that the tech so helpfully suggested (as if I couldn't figure that out myself!) and found :  that FP 2000 and 2002 don't support "passive mode" - at ALL!  No workarounds, no suggestions, just forget it.

So is i5 true, do I have to be running FP2003 to host with FrontPage on LunarPages?

And do I have to wait until DNS has propagated until I can publish, leaving an indeterminate period in which my customers will get sent to "welcome" message from LunarPages?  (some of them would absolutely panic, thinking I had folded).  And during which I won't know whether it will ever work, anyway?  (If this continues for another 6 days, I'll have to pay the other host $50 for another month).

I know I should change to another website tool than FP, but that's beside the point since I don't have time do that now, particularly after spending most of this weekend writing back and forth with Tech Support over this and another issue (that first one was finally resolved).

I also see that it is recommended that I wait until DNS has propagated through before publishing, but I'm sure people can understand why that isn't an option I'm willing to go with.

Do I have to move on to the other hosting company or some other host that can get really me set up in FrontPage, or is there something someone here can suggest I do?  I read many positive comments about how well FP works for them here, but honestly, from what I've been told and what info I've been referred to, it appears that it just isn't possible without the latest FP 2003 version.

Unbelievably frustrated --bwaslo

I do not work for LP but have used FrontPage 2003 here for a few years. I'll try to offer some information.

Web host tech support folks are basically there to give help with server configuration issues, not to troubleshoot web site development issues. That is, they are not there to help with FrontPage issues, Dreamweaver issues, WordPress issues, etc. We volunteers here in the forums will certainly try to hep though.

The best way to transfer a web site from another host is to open the old site live in FP then publish the site using the file system option down to an empty folder on your computer. Then publish the site up to the new host.

Before attempting to use FrontPage HTTP publishing, go into cPanel and install the FP server extensions.

FrontPage HTTP publishing will not work when publishing to the temporary URL. You must wait until the DNS server propagates and points to LunarPages to use HTTP publishing. If you are later dissatisfied with LunarPages, simply change the DNS to a different host.

DNS changes usually take 24 hours or less if you are keeping the same domain name host. It is not necessary to change domain name host to LunarPages to have the web hosting here. Only the DNS settings need to be changed to point to the LunarPages DNS servers as given in the welcome email. I usually make the DNS change about 6 pm Pacific time when activity is low then can usually publish to LunarPages before midnight.

If you want to publish the site to LunarPages without changing the DNS, use FP FTP publishing and publish to your temporary URL. Or you can use any other FTP client, even Windows Explorer FTP to transfer all of the web site files to LunarPages.

Most of this should be familar to FrontPage 2002, but it's been so long since FP 2000 I can't be sure of the differences.

Welcome to LunarPages and I hope this helps  

I don't believe it. It just did it again!  I went to my url ten minutes ago, and it gave me my new site finally.  So I started setting up to do the Frontpage publishing, checked again with my url in the browser.... and now it's back to the old site again, so Frontpage won't publish to the "new"!

I'm going to have to do some google searching to see if propagation of DNS changes normally goes like this.  Very frustrating.

Thanks Rick, it seems to have settled down now. 

And other good news: the publishing from FrontPage 2000 appears to have gone fine.  So if you should be asked whether Lunarpages will support HTTP upload from FrontPage 2000, the answer is "yes".

I appreciate the help, explanations and attention from you and from the support techs at LunarPages.

BWaslo