FrontPage Extensions trouble

[JT]

Hi,

I apologize if this is posted in the wrong group or if this has been
covered in the past. I didn't find anything in previous posts. I'm
wondering how far the influence of the frontpage extensions extends. I
would like to be able to put .net 2.0 web services on a web host in the
directory that is created by visual studio. I would also like to be
able to put classic ASP files in the same directory and use FTP and IE
to update those files. However, I believe that doing this will corrupt
the front page extensions installation. Where do I need to put my
classic ASP files in order to prevent corrupting the front page
extensions?

My second question is, "do front page extensions need to be installed
in order to run the web service or ASP.net web page? If I only have to
have them installed in order to transfer my projects, then maybe I
could live with that.

Thanks,

JT

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

Part 1 - You can FTP files, but you need to be careful. The FP Server
Extensions basically enable the web server to be talked to directly from
tools such as Visual Studio or FrontPage. They also provide a collection of
common CGI functionality, but that's not of interest in this case. It is
possible to upload files via FTP to an FP-enabled web site. The problem
usually comes when uploading the _vti directories. These directories contain
information specific to the FrontPage web. Basically, they have meta
information about the site and all the files within the site. When these are
accidentally uploaded to the sever, it can wreak havoc because the
information contianed may not match the server even though it is appropriate
for your local version of the web. Basically, test the waters by publishing
limited files and never, ever, publish the _vti directories.

Part 2 - No. The FP Server Extensions don't have anything to do with ASP or
web services. They simply provide certain functionality to the web server
for publishing to it as well as certain CGI script functionality for clients
that can make use of it (FrontPage).

Hope this helps,
Mark Fitzpatrick
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage

 

[JT]

Thanks Mark. So a follow-up question would be: If I uploaded a new
file that FPSE was not previously aware of and was not represented in
the _vti directories (such as a new database or new ASP files in the
concerned project directory) would that throw things out of whack or
woud it not care since it appears that it only cares about how to
transfer files, not about whether or not they are there? Are the _vti
directories located in the relative root or are they created for each
project? Would placing my manually transferred files in a different
branch of the directory structure be the wisest move?

Also, I'm VERY new to web services. My installation of IIS at home is
suffering from the seemingly common problem of not recognizing the
..aspx, .asp, and probably other files. It recognizes .htm files. For
this reason, I couldn't create a web service project on localhost and
finally realized it wasn't because of what I was doing when I was able
to create it on my web host. Any help on resolving that would be
immensely appreciated. I've tried the aspnet_regiis -u, -i with no
luck.

Thanks for helping me keep my things in whack. (I have a dream...a
dream of a society free of whack...a completely whackless society...)