How To Make MS Frontpage Responsive-Without Code

Work-Around for Making MS FrontPage Responsive

How to make MS Frontpage responsive was a time consuming research, I find different websites contian answers that do not work.  Every answer on support group  either involved code I did not understand or no answer at all.  This can be difficult to accept.  No clear answer from support groups founded by certified and brilliant geeks. Look, I am no geek only a geek wantabe: I need an answer in plain English not Geek Jargon.  Unfortunately if no one gives an answer, I must try to explore for at least a work-around  answer to make my old website to receive as many clicks as possible.

The main code most geeks suggest in support sites Is:  <meta name=viewport content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1″>   There were other codes but none of the codes  worked.  When inserted in the header of html, the code moved to the body instead of the header.  Sometimes the code would be visible on the top of the webpage.  Yes, the code works in newer programs like WordPress but MS Frontpage was just too old.

I read support pages for a fix concerning MS Frontpage responsiveness.  There was frustration from webmasters that created huge websites that are 10 years or more old.   There has to be something that can be done for these older websites. One of the first websites I created is now 16 years old and has almost 100 pages.  Finally after months of searching for an answer- I discovered a work-around.  Please note this work-around will make Frontpage websites more responsive in certain browsers-chrome and edge.  Firefox browser is improved but the fonts are still smaller than desired (still better than the tiny fonts and links without this work-around).  

Some responsiveness is better than nothing.  Chrome browser has approximately 1 billion active users for about 77% of browser usage and Edge browser has about 4%.  Browser Statistics  That means 81% of users can see a website using Frontpage much more clearly in mobile, tablets and different size desktops.  That is very good news even if Google doesn’t see perfection.

5 Ways to Make MS Frontpage Responsive

Without Code

This solution will make the website more responsive on most browsers.  I found that Chome and Edge worked quite well but Firefox was harder to read on a cell phone but an improvement.  

Remove all themes along with bars, lines, links that appear horizontally on the page 

1. Access MS Frontpage program on computer hard drive to delete a theme.
2.     Click format–Theme–click on “no theme”   If the list of themes do not appear click below the space below the select page button and the list will appear.
3. Remove all tables  Click tables–click convert table to text.  Do this for all table on the page
4. Remove all bars and line that show across the page
5. Remove all  links  horizontally listed on the page  (links are especially tricky).   List of links should be vertical and one link per line.  Links should have a small image in front of them. Example        Some links may need a few spaces between the image and the link.  I have no idea why this works but whatever works is most important to get to the goal of responsiveness.

Good News

1. No coding is required
2. Link juice is not lost completely.
3.  You can do this yourself.
4. No retyping of pages
5. Website will appear as much more responsive to chrome and Explorer browsers.
6. You will not need to learn a new program like WordPress or hire someone to change your website
7.  No 301 redirects for all pages

Bad news 

• Some browsers are not as responsive –  Firefox.
• Google may still label your pages as not mobile friendly.. Adjusting website pages is still time-consuming work.  Time involved for about 40 of the most popular pages was a few hours a day for two weeks.  Usually about two hours for one page.  The time depends on if the pages have numerous tables and links on the page.

Another Method To Make MS Frontpage Responsive Is To Redirect to Another Responsive Website

Additionally, there is another way to redirect a Frontpage url to a responsive website.  

1.  Click on the MS Frontpage and the page you want to redirect.
2.  Right click on page properties in normal view 
3.  Click on the custom tab
4.  Click on add
5.  Type the word “Refresh” in the first box-no quotes 
6.  Type “0; url=http://www.yourdomain/yourpageurl/ 

Good News

• The old html url is forwarded to your totally responsive website and is pointing to a page similar.  Do not point a specific page to the home page.  If you do not specify a page similar in content to the old URL then Google may point to a 404 page not found.   
•  Very little link juice should be lost-please verify how this method will affect your stats with a few not-popular pages before converting your whole site.  

Bad News

•  If you still like the pages on the old url then you need to re-type the pages in your new website.  You cannot copy an old html format into the new programs like WordPress.  These are different programming languages and will not work.   That means if you have huge amount of pages then you will need to re-type all of them unless you can direct to content similar pages.

301 redirects revisited

Stats provided by my server cpanel were not giving all the information needed.  I wanted to know how many clicks from mobile devises were on my MS Frontpage website.  Statcounter.com provided the stats that show at least 40% of the clicks were from mobile devices.  Google references most of the pages on the MS website as “This page is not mobile friendly” but people still click on the pages from mobile devices anyway. 

What good is it if people click on my pages and then cannot see the information on the site?  After doing more research, most geek sites stated that link juice is not drastically lost from a 301 redirect.  As a result, my most popular website pages were retyped into a wordpress blog and I redirected the pages from the redirects in the cpanel.  That was easy and the time to redirect from one page to the WP site was about less than one second. 

The whole 301 redirect procedure was easy.  Finally, most of my pages were mobile friendly!  Except–a few of my old website pages were on page one of Google and the ranking dropped from page one to page four.  Another page dropped from page one to bottom of page two.   With Google nothing is guaranteed after a change in a website page.  However, if you ranked on Google’s first page once then do it again. (more work)

Good News For Making MS Frontpage Responsive Using a 301 Redirect

•  Page ranking is not demolished compared to a brand new website.
•  Pages are now responsive for mobile devices.
•  Opportunity to update information on pages.
•  Does not significantly affect loading speed when done through the cpanel

Bad News  For Making MS Frontpage Responsive Using a 301 Redirect

•  MS pages need retyping
•  High-ranking pages  lose link juice.

In conclusion, there are no good choices.  Hope the work-around stated above will help keep the old website show more responsive for the next few years.  Maybe by that time a super geek can develop a program so that we can press a special button to make MS Frontpage responsive.  I am hoping for that fix!  Please comment if you have any questions or suggestions on this work-around or another work-around for any other webmaster problem