The FrontPage Server Extensions Page

FrontPage Server Extensions from Microsoft provides Web-based and command-line administration for extending virtual servers. Extending virtual servers with FrontPage Server Extensions enables the site owner to author the site in FrontPage and delegate site ownership and administration credentials.

If you build and maintain Web sites for customers and coordinate these efforts with multiple authors, then the features included in FrontPage Server Extensions can help you accomplish the following tasks:

• Manage Web sites either on the local server or remotely, by using HTML Administration pages or a quick command-line interface.
• Secure Web sites and grant authoring, browsing, site management, or other user rights to authorized users.
• Analyze site usage to find out who is viewing the site and how often.
• Track errors on the server to help prevent site or server crashes.
• Upgrade FrontPage Web site management functionality with features like forms, search tools, and usage analysis.

Extending a Web site means enabling various FrontPage Server Extensions features to improve how you manage the content development and security of your site. Extending a Web site adds another level of security to the site, and after a Web site is extended, a FrontPage client can open the site and author it in FrontPage. A site that is not extended cannot be opened or authored in FrontPage.

Sites or virtual directories that are configured to use Active Directory isolation or FTP load balancing should not be mapped to physical directories that are used for Web sites that use FrontPage Server Extensions. Doing so can allow users to view any files in that folder structure over the network.

Extending Web Sites

Before you can extend Web sites with FrontPage Server Extensions, you must create a virtual server for every Web site you plan to extend. A virtual server is different than a virtual directory. A virtual server, in technical terms, is a virtual computer that resides on an HTTP server but appears to the user as a separate HTTP server. Several virtual servers can reside on one computer, each capable of running its own programs and each with individualized access to input and peripheral devices. Each virtual server has its own domain name and IP address and appears, to the user, to be an individual Web site. Some Internet service providers use virtual servers for clients who want to use their own domain names.

By default, IIS provides a working virtual server called "Default Web Site". This virtual server points to the content directory

%systemdrive%\Inetpub\wwroot

To create a new virtual server, you must create a content directory.

FrontPage Server Extensions does not support unicode content directory names or WebDAV. In addition, to remotely administer a Web site that uses Sharepoint Team Services (STS) from Microsoft, you must assign the _vti_bin virtual directory of new FrontPage Server Extensions virtual servers to the MSSharePointPool application pool. Do not make changes to the MSSharePointPool application pool configuration.

If you have an STS Web site, the following types of pages do not work without excluding the virtual directory containing the pages from the STS ISAPI filter:

• ASP pages
• ASP.NET pages
• PHP pages
• PerlScript pages