October 22, 2004

FrontPage Meta Tags

DEAR TINA: In the Head as default, FrontPage 2000 writes:

<.meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<.meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
<.meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">

I've found that I can extract this and nothing seems to happen. But what is meta, and why did FrontPage 2000 elect to place it as default?

Bill Fischer

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FrontPage Meta Tags have their uses

DEAR BILL: The two FrontPage tags are there so that you can see which version is being used to make the site (and as an ad of sorts) and also it tells SOME of the fp icons in folder view (and the other views) which icon needs to be displayed for what is going on. If you notice they are different depending what is happening, like weather a file is open or closed for instance, it does not affect them all, you can find out more about them at. FrontPage Icons

<.meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">

Defines the name of the program which created the web document. This is used for reference purposes only and does not affect search engine placement. The above means it was created in FrontPage 2000.

<.meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">

Used by FrontPage to define SOME of its own icon's within the program and is also
similar to the above meta.

Meta tags impart information to various platforms for example they can tell a browser what character set to use or how tell a search engine about your description and keywords. They go between the head tags.

There are two types of meta tags http-equiv and name. The first gives you extra control over the page by allowing you to define more information to be sent to the browser in the http header.

The second lets you define information external to your document, which might include search engines or spiders etc. You can find out more about them at: Meta Tags Tutorial

If you want to remove the tags you can do so with a Free FrontPage Addon at: No FrontPage Meta For FrontPage 2000, 2002. It works for FP 2003 as well, however FP03 already has the option.

Removing the tags has no ill effects, it just means SOME of your icons won't display as before. Some people don't like to have them showing.

They do have their uses though. Crafted with FrontPage

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