Using FrontPage Server Extensions to Extend Web Sites

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

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

FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions from Microsoft is an update of FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions, and includes new security features, such as roles and rights, and new features for monitoring server health and Web site usage.

If you build and maintain Web sites for customers and coordinate these efforts with multiple authors, and then the features included in FrontPage 2002 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 learn 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 such as forms, search tools, and usage analysis.

Extending a Web site means enabling FrontPage Server Extensions features which improve the management of 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.

Warning

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 could enable users to view any files in that folder structure over the network.

Extending Web Sites

Before you can extend Web sites by using FrontPage Server Extensions, you must create a virtual server for every Web site that you plan to extend. A virtual server differs from a virtual directory. A virtual server, in technical terms, is a virtual machine 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 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 named 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 change 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 that contains the pages from the STS ISAPI filter:

  • ASP pages

  • ASP.NET pages

  • PHP pages

  • PerlScript pages

Procedures

To enable these types of pages to work on your STS Web site, do the following

  1. In the Central Administration Web site for STS, choose to Manage your virtual directory or Web site.

  2. Under Defined Managed Paths, type the path to the virtual directory that contains your excluded pages (such as <code>\MyASPPages</code>) and select Exclude.

Virtual servers should not be nested because virtual servers nested within each other are not visible to FrontPage Server Extensions. For example, if you must create two virtual servers, the first content directory could be located in systemroot\Inetpub\Test; and the second content directory could be located in systemroot\Inetpub\Test2. If the Test2 directory were located in the Test directory, all the permissions in Test2 would be overwritten by Test.

Important

Never change permissions or Access Control Lists (ACLs) at the content directory level. To maintain a secure environment, always make permissions changes and other security-related changes by using the FrontPage 2002 Server Administration tool.

After creating a virtual server, create the corresponding Web site in IIS.

After creating the Web site in IIS, you are ready to extend the site. Note that a site created in FrontPage and added to IIS is already extended.

Before starting the procedure of extending the Web site, check to make sure you have enabled the FrontPage Server Extensions .dll files. The following .dll files must be installed on your machine before you can extend Web pages.

  • systemdrive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\50\Isapi\_vti_adm\Fpadmdll.dll

  • systemdrive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\50\Isapi\Shtml.dll

  • systemdrive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\50\Isapi\_vti_adm\Admin.dll

  • systemdrive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\50\Isapi\_vti_aut\Author.dll

Important

You must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer to perform the following procedure or procedures. As a security best practice, log on to your computer by using an account that is not in the Administrators group, and then use the runas command to run IIS Manager as an administrator. At a command prompt, type runas /user:Administrative_AccountName "mmc %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\iis.msc".

To extend a site using the FrontPage 2002 Server Administration tool

  1. From the Start menu, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and click Microsoft SharePoint Administrator. If IIS returns a 404 error, "The page cannot be found," check to make sure that the FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions optional component is enabled in the Windows Components Wizard in the Add or Remove Programs item of the Control Panel.

  2. On the FrontPage 2002 Server Administration site, check to see that the virtual server and corresponding Web site that you created earlier are listed in the Virtual Servers section.

  3. To extend the Web site, click the Extend link next to the virtual server name.

  4. Click Submit. The FrontPage 2002 Server Administration tool adds FrontPage Server Extensions template directories to the content directory of your virtual server, and other files that contain metadata.