Configuring Properties for a Virtual Server
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In previous versions of FrontPage Server Extensions and with Microsoft® Office 2000 Server Extensions, you set configuration options for a virtual server by using commands in Microsoft Management Console (MMC). With Microsoft's SharePoint™ Team Services and Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions, most of these configuration options are now set by using HTML Administration pages or with the command line.
Virtual server configuration settings
After you have installed SharePoint Team Services or FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions and extended a virtual server, you can configure options for the virtual server. The following options can be set at the virtual server level and affect all sites on that virtual server: authoring options, mail settings, performance tuning options, client scripting options, security settings, and database settings (SharePoint Team Services only). If you do not change these configuration settings, the virtual server inherits the settings from the Set Installation Defaults administration page (in the Server Administration pages) or from the global settings on the command line. You can configure these settings by using either HTML Administration pages or the command line.
Authoring options
On the Change Configuration Settings page (in the Virtual Server Administration pages), you can turn off authoring for a virtual server by clearing the Enable authoring check box. Note that even with authoring turned off for a SharePoint team Web site, users can still add items to and update information on the Web site. They cannot, however, add new pages to the site.
On the command line, you use the Authoring property to turn authoring on or off for a virtual server. To turn authoring on, set the property to ENABLED. To turn authoring off, set the property to DISABLED.
Mail settings
Periodically, the server sends e-mail notification (such as for Web subscriptions, invitations, document library rules, and usage analysis notifications) or other messages to users of your site or to you, the administrator. On the Change Configuration Settings page (in the Virtual Server Administration pages), you can specify the SMTP mail server to use for these messages in the Mail Settings section. You also can type the From and Reply-to address to use for these messages, and specify which mail encoding option and character set to use in the e-mail messages.
Note The mail setting can also be configured for the entire server at once by setting configuration defaults on the Set Installation Defaults page (in the Server Administration pages). If you set configuration defaults for your server, any new virtual servers automatically inherit the settings, although Web site administrators can override these settings for their Web sites. For more information, see Setting Installation Defaults.
On the command line, you use the following properties to control mail settings for a virtual server.
Property |
Description |
MailCharSet |
Specifies the character set to use. Can be set to any character set value, not just the values listed on the Change Configuration Settings page (in the Virtual Server Administration pages). The default settings for character sets vary depending on the feature sending the e-mail content. For subscription notifications, the default character set matches the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\ For usage analysis notifications, document library rules notifications, and invitations, the default character set is the same as the character set for the current Microsoft FrontPage Web site. You can change this setting in FrontPage by using the Web Setting command (Tools menu). In the Web Setting dialog box, click the Language tab, and then select a character set in the Default page encoding box. |
MailEncoding |
Specifies the type of encoding to use. The default value is 8bit unless mail is being sent using the "iso-2022-jp" character set, in which case the default value is 7bit. |
MailReplyTo |
Specifies the e-mail address to use when replying to subscription notifications messages. The default for SMTP is user@host, where user is the current user account and host is the current host name. |
MailSender |
Sets the user name to use as the From account when sending e-mail. Specifically, it is used as the argument to the SEND FROM: command in SMTP. The default for SMTP is user@host, where user is the current user account and host is the current host name. |
SendMailCommand |
Sets the name of the program to which e-mail should be piped. Typically this is sendmail, but it could be any program. |
SMTPHost |
Sets the name of the IP address of a host running an SMTP daemon, such as sendmail on UNIX or SMTP Server on Microsoft Windows®. By default, SharePoint Team Services and FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions assume that the daemon is listening on port 25 (the standard for SMTP), but you can override this by appending ":xx" to the name, where the xx is the port to use. Normally, you set either the SMTPHost or SendmailCommand properties, but not both, because SendmailCommand takes priority over SMTPHost. |
Performance tuning options
The size of the Web sites on a server affects the server performance. On the Change Configuration Settings page (in the Virtual Server Administration pages), you set the performance tuning to match the size of your Web site in the Performance Tuning section. You can use the default settings, or specify settings for the in-memory document cache, the include-file cache, the image-file cache, the full-text search index size, and the maximum cached document size.
On the command line, you use the following properties to control performance tuning for a virtual server.
Property |
Description |
CacheMaxDocMeta |
Sets the maximum number of documents kept in the cache while SharePoint Team Services or FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions is performing write operations. |
CacheMaxImage |
Sets the maximum number of images whose HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes the server extensions will cache while recalculating hyperlinks or saving a page. If you set this variable globally or per virtual server, and Web sites on your server frequently contain more than 16 images, you should increase this number. If you set this variable on an individual subweb, do not set it higher than the number of image files in the web. |
CacheMaxInclude |
Sets the maximum number of included files on a page (that is, files included through the Include Page component) that SharePoint Team Services or FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions caches while recalculating hyperlinks or saving the page. Increase the value of CacheMaxInclude to the highest number of pages that are included in any page in your Web site, if that number is higher than the default value (16). |
CacheMaxIncludeSize |
Sets the maximum document size in kilobytes that SharePoint Team Services or FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions caches internally. |
CacheMinDocMeta |
Sets the maximum number of documents kept in the cache while SharePoint Team Services or FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions is doing read operations. This is the maximum number of documents whose property information, such as web parameters, you want to keep in active memory. When an author opens a document after the cache is full, the cache is cleared and starts with the most recently opened document. |
TextMemory |
Sets full-text indexing settings for the built-in Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) search engine on the UNIX platform. Setting this property to 0 turns off full-text indexing of the Web site. A non-zero value specifies the number of megabytes of RAM the server extensions are to use during text indexing for hash-tables and other data structures. For Web sites with less than 500 pages, set the value of this property to 1. For webs with 500 to 5000 pages, set it to 2. For webs with more than 5000 pages, set it to 4. |
Client scripting options
You can control which types of client scripting are allowed on your virtual server. On the Change Configuration Settings page (in the Virtual Server Administration pages), in the Client Scripting section, you use the Scripting language box to select the scripting language to use. SharePoint Team Services and FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions support either JavaScript or VBScript. You can also select no scripting if you do not want to allow any client scripting on your virtual server.
On the command line, you use the following properties to control client scripting for a virtual server.
Property |
Description |
AllowExecutableScripts |
Controls client scripting for a virtual server. When AllowExecutableScripts is set to a non-zero value, SharePoint Team Services or FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions sets the executable bit on files within executable directories. When directories are marked as executable, all files within the directory will also be marked as executable. If authors are permitted to upload into executable directories (that is, the NoExecutableCgiUpload variable is set to 0), then when AllowExecutableScripts is set to a non-zero value, authors can execute newly uploaded CGI scripts and ISAPI extensions. If NoExecutableCgiUpload is set to 0 and AllowExecutableScripts is set to 0, authors can upload and use ASP and IDC files, but not CGI or ISAPI files. |
ScriptLanguage |
Sets the language for the scripts that are generated by SharePoint Team Services or FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions to enforce any data-validation settings an author has applied to form fields. Valid values are VBScript, JavaScript, or none. |
Security settings
You determine which security settings to implement on all virtual servers. On the Change Configuration Settings page (in the Virtual Server Administration pages), you can change security options in the Security Settings section. You can track information about the authoring processes by selecting the Log authoring actions check box. When you select this check box, an Author.log file is created in the Web site's _vti_log folder. If you want all users to use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security, you can select the Require SSL for authoring and administration check box. Finally, you can specify whether or not to allow users to store executable files (such as EXE files) on your virtual server by selecting or clearing the Allow authors to upload executables check box. Note that if the Allow authors to upload executables check box is cleared, then users cannot upload any files to any folders that are marked executable. It does not matter whether the files being uploaded are executable files or not.
Note The security options can also be configured for the entire server at once by setting configuration defaults on the Set Installation Defaults page (in the Server Administration pages). If you set configuration defaults for your server, any new virtual servers automatically inherit the settings, although Web site administrators can override these settings for their Web sites. For more information, see Setting Installation Defaults.
On the command line, you use the following properties to control security settings for a virtual server.
Property |
Description |
Logging |
Specifies whether to log authoring actions. If Logging is set to a non-zero value, SharePoint Team Services or FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions logs all authoring operations to the file Author.log in the _vti_log directory of the Web site. Each operation is recorded with the current time, remote host, author's user name, Web name, operation performed, and the per-operation data. In the event of a security breach, this log file can be analyzed for authoring activity on the Web site. |
NoExecutableCgiUpload |
Specifies whether users can upload executable scripts. When NoExecutableCgiUpload is set to a non-zero value, new CGI scripts cannot be run. On a UNIX server, when this key is set to a non-zero value, SharePoint Team Services or FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions will not set the execute bit on any CGI scripts that an author uploads to a Web site using FrontPage. On a Windows NT® server, when this key is set to a non-zero value, SharePoint Team Services and FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions will not allow the file to be uploaded. |
RequireSSL |
Specifies whether to require Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security for all authoring and site-level administrative actions. When RequireSSL is set to enabled (or any other value except disabled), the server extensions require a Secure Sockets Layer connection between the FrontPage client and the server. |
Database options (SharePoint Team Services only)
You can change the database connection settings for SharePoint Team Services at the virtual server level. To manage database settings, you use the Change Database Connection page (in the Virtual Server Administration pages). For more information about changing database settings, see Managing the Database. In addition to the connection settings, you can also schedule automatic backups of the database, or perform a backup or restore process. For more information about these tasks, see Backing up and Restoring Data.
Site configuration settings
In addition to the virtual server configuration settings, you can set feature settings for your Web site. These settings can be changed by using the Site Administration page or the command line.
The following feature settings can be set for each individual Web:
User and role settings
You can add or delete users and roles, change which roles a user is assigned to, and so on. For more information about user settings, see Managing Users. For more information about role settings, see Managing Roles.
Web document discussion and subscription settings (SharePoint Team Services only)
You can control whether Web document discussions and subscriptions are turned on and configure other options. For more information about Web document discussion and subscription settings, see Managing Web Document Discussions and Subscriptions.
Usage analysis settings
You can turn usage analysis on or off for your Web site and configure other options. For more information about usage analysis settings, see Analyzing Web Site Usage.
Server health settings
You can turn server health on or off for your Web site and configure other options. For more information about server health settings, see Monitoring Server Health.
Using HTML Administration pages to configure properties for a virtual server
You use the Change Configuration Settings page in the Virtual Server Administration pages to configure your virtual server.
To configure a virtual server
Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administration, and then click Microsoft SharePoint Administrator.
On the Server Administration page, next to the virtual server name, click Administration.
Click Change configuration settings.
On the Change Configuration Settings page, select the options you want, and then click Submit.
Using the command line to configure properties for a virtual server
To configure settings for a virtual server from the command line, you use the SetProperty operation with Owsadm or Owsrmadm utilities. You can set authoring, performance tuning, client scripting, mail settings, and security settings properties by using the command line. For example, to turn authoring off for a virtual server, you would set the Authoring property by using the following syntax:
owsadm.exe -o setproperty -p 1088 -pn Authoring -pv enabled
This syntax turns authoring off for the virtual server at port 1088.
For a complete list of the operations you can perform by using the command-line tools, see Command-line Operations.
For more information about setting properties from the command line, see Setting Configuration Properties.