The most obvious reason to move forward is that Microsoft will never offer version upgrades to FrontPage – thus making it a deprecated program which is no longer supported. A more positive approach is to look at the perks of using Expression Web.

Expression offers features not available to FrontPage. Dynamic Web Templates (DWT’s) are a major perk. The master templates are kept separate from teh design so that you can make global changes to your site through the single source template files (i.e. template.dwt). Similar to working with Cascading Style Sheets, the DWT offers a single source to edit changes and those modification are rolled-out to all the pages of your site.

In the FrontPage world, we had only just started to enjoy the use of Include Pages (or Server Side Includes). If you were using these helpful Includes, you will appreciate how easy it became to update common elements and realize immediate updates vs. the previous approach of page-by-page edits. It was quite painful.

There are other important features to Expression Web but this is likely one of the more obvious – global site changes which allows for easy updates and easier site redesigns.

Let us know if you need help converting an existing FrontPage site to expression Web. Perhaps you just need a jump start to get the site moved over to the new format and we can help you do that!

Discount codes for repeat customers (hello VIP’s!), gift certificates, and other features to reward customers for their service. When I shop, I love to be rewarded and recognized for my loyalty so these features are just the reason I switched carts.

I have found a small obstacle in the cart set-up that I wasn’t aware of at point of purchase. My old system allowed me to load a product (web template) and offer three version choices for the purchase to download: an Expression Web template, Dreamweaver template, or plain XHTML template. This system requires that I load them as three unique products. So I had to rethink the entire system and create a navigation that starts with “Version” (or application / software) and then offer tier 2 navigation for the categories themselves. Overall, I think it’s still very user-friendly – just a tad more work for me. I still figure it’s more user-friendly than my last cart in terms of offering a flexible navigation / presentation of products.

But – only you can tell me if I’m right! So let em know what you think!

So next steps – adding a mailing list and a comment feedback section.

I love building templates and reckon that if I can gather your feedback, there is a great opportunity to build templates based on your requests.

Til then – drop me an email at info {at} templatehappy.com and I’ll take manual submissions.

Cheers!

The new system will offer a more user-friendly interface for web template customers. And the process requires that I migrate all of the content into this new system and that will take a bit of time.  And, for my regular customers – I will still provide your volume discount incentives through a manual shopping system (paypal and email). Just drop me a line and I’ll make the necessary arrangements.

Thanks for your continued patience –