Contents of this Page

Installation/Removal of FrontPage Extensions
FrontPage98 vs. FrontPage97
FrontPage97:  FTP & Telnet Issues
Creating a New Web & Restarting of Web Daemon
FrontPage Transfer Protocol & Internet Traffic
Web Publishing Wizard
Making ".exe" Files Downloadable
Publishing with FrontPage - General
Publishing with FrontPage98
Publishing with FrontPage97
Additional FrontPage97 Tutorials
FrontPage98 Software Patch
FrontPage 2000 and 2002

Important Things To Know (summary):

1. If you signed up for a FrontPage account, we initially installed FrontPage extensions for your site. If you decide that you no longer wish to use FrontPage, and you make this decision after the first 30 days from when you setup your account, you will be charged a $40 fee to have them removed. Likewise, if you initially signed up for an account without FrontPage, and you later decide that you want to use FrontPage, you will be charged a $40 fee for the installation of the extensions (unless you make the decision within the aforementioned 30-day grace period).

2. We have the FrontPage'98 extensions and Frontpage'2000 extensions installed on our servers. Please tell us which version you want on your site. Frontpage'98 extensions are backwards compatible to Frontpage'97 designed sites. Frontpage'2000 is compatible with Frontpage'2000 only. Frontpage'2002 is not much better. WE DO NOT RECOMMEND THE INSTALLATION OF EXTENSIONS. You can use Frontpage to create your site and can do everything you need without them. Just use our scripts in place of the bots. Frontpage has upload problems which can lock out a visitor. Use of Frontpage in a "local mode" and using an ftp client will solve this problem. (If you have extensions installed, you will not be able to use this solution.)

3. If you choose to use FrontPage with the extensions installed, the only way to upload your web site(s) is with FrontPage; you CANNOT FTP into your "/frontpage/" Directory. You can use FTP & TELNET to enter other areas of your site outside the FrontPage Directory Structure. Sites with FrontPage'98 extensions can use FTP & TELNET to upload files to the FrontPage Directory Structure but pages using FrontPage Web Bots must be loaded with FrontPage. Directories outside of the the "frontpage" directories must be uploaded to with FTP. These include /cgibin and /docs.
   
   The DocumentRoot (the directory visible to web browsers) on older frontpage installations is named,
   "/mnt/web/guide/yourdomain/frontpage" .  On newer installations it is named, "/mnt/web/guide/yourdomain/wwwfp".  This is where your web content goes, this is where Frontpage will publish to.

4. Every time you create a "New Web" on our server, we will have to restart your web daemon. We have now updated our Web Configuration to automatically reboot every 15 minutes if you have "Created A New Web". This means that you publish the web and the server creates the directory for it. Shut down your FrontPage Explorer for at least 15 minutes while you go get a cup of coffee. Come back and restart the FrontPage Explorer, republish your web and you are all set. This is for new sub-webs only; changes to your root web should be apparent immediately after publishing.

5. FrontPage is a good product, however its transfer protocol is temperamental and does not react well to heavy traffic. Therefore it is a good idea to have each of your directories created as their own sub-web, and then "publish" it to your site. Try to keep each individual web down to 1 or 2 megabytes. Larger webs will tend to "time-out" when publishing.

6. If you have the "Web Publishing Wizard" on your computer, you will need to uninstall it using your control panel's Add/Remove Programs feature.   This Wizard is for sites that do not have the FrontPage Server Extensions installed.

7. If you want your visitors to download ".exe" files from your site, there is a small amount of work involved.   First, you must place the .exe files in a subdirectory of your root or sub-web.  They cannot be in the root directory of a web or the frontpage web bots will not work.  Second, you need to create a file named .htaccess in the subdirectory containing the .exe's . The only contents of the file will be:
   
   Add Type application/octet-stream        exe  EXE
   
   This can also be done in your /docs directory if you wish to keep the files out of your frontpage directories.

8. Last thing to remember is "You Must Be Online To Publish You Web".

(Sorry, all you fine non-virtual customers - FrontPage '98 and up will only work
  with fully qualified domain names. Gives you incentive to upgrade, huh?!?)

That should be about it! Because it is a new method of administering your site, there will probably be kinks; we will do everything we can to help you along, though. Good Luck!

Microsoft has released the Frontpage 2000 and 2002 server extensions, however there continue to have stability and compatibility issues surrounding their use. The 2000/2002 products are also not compatible with Netscape and AOL browsers. Go figure, lets tell 35% of all users to your site that we don't care about them and want them to go away. If you want to use Frontpage 2000/2002, YOU CAN STILL AVOID THIS BY NOT HAVING THE BOTS (EXTENSIONS) INSTALLED AND USING A FTP PROGRAM. It is a simple solution that works.