Marcia - 8:53 pm on Mar 26, 2001 (gmt 0)

Not that I wish to belabor this issue, but it still remains to be answered what those of us who have not used FP are to do if we are approached to take over or contribute work on a site that has been done with FP (aside from doing it over from the ground up).

I have indeed seen absolutely beautiful sites that were done in FP - just saw a couple last night. And yes, they were done by professionals, and no, the ones I just saw did not use the proprietary features - the code was not half bad.

BUT!! If we are approached for doing work, we have no control or say over what has been done before.

My experience with FP: I did some work for a site done with FP at the beginning of last summer. I sent change recommendations to the site owner, which he implemented as he wished - used what he wanted, left the rest. He did change the nav bar to regular links, as suggested, and we added some additional text navigation. On only the first (index) page, I totally redid the HTML, as well as making other extensive changes - again, he kept what he wished - but text links to the site were added from the index page. To this very day, the index page sits at #1 under the chosen keyword phrase, and the remainder of the site (still has the FP code) has never yet been crawled or indexed. BTW, tnis didn't take a rocket scientist, folks, he wanted brand recognition, so the company name = the keywords = the domain name, but STILL - it had not ever gotten s/e rankings, in spite of a Yahoo directory listing, and again - the only page with s/e listing at all is my HTML page done from scratch. OK..we are both happy, but the facts are what they are.

I have just recently had to turn down a very lucrative redesign/SEO job because the site was done in FP. I have not the slightest idea how to approach it, unless I allow myself to be coerced into purchasing the software. I refuse. I am unequivocally and diametrically opposed, both philosophically and politically, to being taken hostage by proprietary software. So this woman is restricted to finding someone who uses that software (unless it's done over from scratch), thereby limiting her free choice to choose who she feels is most qualified, and who she wants to work with.

The alternative is to take the job, subcontract the modifications out to a FP user, and use cloaking. Huh? Helloooo? What does that tell me?

So what I am saying here is that yes, there are lovely, professional-looking, even award-winning sites done in FP (I've seen them), but what has happened is that its proprietary nature has caused an isolation and segmentation of the follow-up market once a site is already done.