Member Avatar for ggeoff

I had updated a webpage and on checking a new link to the same page later in the week found that the page was empty. On viewing the source I found some code refering to msnavigation no other content in the body of the page. I copied a backup version of the page over to the web to overwrite the page that was giving me trouble. I resaved the web and checked -same result no content. Refreshed the browser, still no changes -missing content.

I opend FP again and on checking found that although the page content is there in the Normal view, in HTML view there is no content. I have not encountered anything like this before and the only solution that can I think of is whether FP coud have got corrupted. Has anyone else any ideas as to how this can happen?

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Dani AI

Generated

This happened when FrontPage’s editor and the page markup got out of sync: Normal (design) view was still showing the DOM FrontPage kept internally, while the serialized HTML had been malformed or reduced to FrontPage-specific placeholders (the msnavigation/webbot pieces). That mismatch will make the live site show only what the server actually receives, so the browser shows the background but no real body content.

Likely causes and what to check

  • Corrupted/malformed markup created by the WYSIWYG editor (duplicate top‑level tags or stray closing tags) which breaks the HTML serialization.
  • FrontPage web components (navigation, webbot/server behaviors) that require FrontPage Server Extensions — if the host does not process them the page can render with only placeholder code.
  • CSS or script hiding content in the output DOM (less common, but worth checking).

Practical recovery steps

  • Make a full backup of the page and the web folder (include FrontPage metadata folders) before editing.
  • Open the page in a plain text editor and inspect the structure; fix duplicate top‑level tags and stray fragments so there is a single well‑formed HTML root and body.
  • If FrontPage webbot/navigation controls are present, remove or replace them with static HTML (or restore server‑side support on the host).
  • Test the fixed file locally in a browser (open the file, view source) and use developer tools (F12) to confirm the DOM actually contains the content and it isn’t hidden by CSS.
  • When fixed, upload the file directly (FTP) to be sure what the server receives; this also avoids FrontPage’s uploader rewriting files.

Longer term: FrontPage 2002 is obsolete and can silently generate brittle markup. Keep regular backups, validate pages (W3C) after edits, and consider migrating to a modern editor that produces cleaner, standards‑compliant HTML. As discovered, editing the raw HTML and uploading the corrected file is an effective immediate repair.

Member Avatar for ggeoff

I think it is to do with adding a doctype to the page which I did so as to add a meta statement for emulating IE7. I' ll copy one of my pages and attempt to replicate the situation, and then get back to report whether that is the cause.

Geoff

Member Avatar for ggeoff

I think it is to do with adding a doctype to the page which I did so as to add a meta statement for emulating IE7. I' ll copy one of my pages and attempt to replicate the situation, and then get back to report whether that is the cause.

Geoff

No I can't support that explanation. I can find a page with a doctype but that does display ok and uploads. At present, in Frontpage 2002 I have a page that displays it's content in Normal view -the page content is present. In HTML view there is no content, but there are three Body statements! code:

<html>

<head>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<title>photo_survey_of_freshford_somerset</title>


<meta name="Microsoft Border" content="b, default">
</head> 
<body bgcolor="#FEFEEF">
<body>
<body></body>

</html>

A copy of the page uploaded to the website shows nothing except the background colour. I added the missing content using Notepad++ and marked the page in Frontpage 2002 as Don't upload. I used Wise-FTP5 to upload the amended page to my website. I am using Expression web 2 on new websites.

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