Re: Help with Interactions between IISadmin mmc and FP2003

From: edwardb (eboyhan_at_hotpop.com)
Date: 06/22/04 

Date: 22 Jun 2004 16:57:20 -0700

Hi Stefan
  Thank you for your prompt reply. In retrospect I guess I wasn't
very clear in my first post ... I'll try again.

The main thing is: I am NOT asking a "how do I fix something that is
broken" type of question. We do not have anything quite like that.
Everything is working fine; and all the main things with IIS, FP2003,
FPSE 2000, 2002 are installed and working well (publishing, creating
subwebs, hit counters, the works). I appreciate the links below; I
had already done that from the exact links given: both FPSE2002 and
the security patch -- all in, all working fine.

My questions are more along the lines of finding out "how things work"
not "how to fix them".

I appreciate your comment about undo complexity, but that is not in my
purview to change. I work for a corporation that is changing how they
build and manage web sites (currently using Site Server 3.0). To
something else. My job is to gather information and prototype several
of the options under consideration one of which is the subject of my
many questions here. The architecture I presented is only one of
those under consideration; it seems apt because it closely mimics the
Site Server Architecture currently in use, and the probable structure
(more a function of people and organizations than technology, I fear)
that will be eventually be adopted.

It does appear to us -- based on experience to date -- that FP behaves
somewhat differently when working within a local site by itself, when
working and publishing to a disk-based site, when working and
publishing to a server-based site on WinXP (only one site allowed) on
the same machine as the FP client, and working and publishing to a
server based site using W2003 server, or Unix/Linux/Apache (with and
without FPSE) on a totally different machine/Os environment. One of my
tasks is to gather as much factual information about how all of these
scenarios behave so that decision makers can make a more informed
decision. We are attempting to explore all the different
client/server, local/remote site, FP/IIS scenarios that we can.

My questions here, mainly have to do with things one appears to be
able to do either from the IIS Admin MMC snapin, the FPSE2002 admin
pages (really a subset of the Office XP STS admin pages), or from
within FP itself that appear to do the same thing (like creating a
subweb), but may not be exactly the same, or have subtle side effects
depending on (particularly) whether one uses IIS Admin or FP. Since
this is a decidedly corporate environment, the inclination is going to
be towards maximizing reliance on IIS MMC, and minimizing the use of
FP2003 for admin-like tasks. That said it all has to pass through a
"what are actually the technical facts Ma'am" kind of filter first,
which is where my first post comes in.

I'll edit the rest of this and put clarications in line below:

"Stefan B Rusynko" <sbr_enjoy@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<u5QV1HEWEHA.1164@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl>...
> IMHO
> You are making the whole process too complex
> - why create the sites as disc based webs to test them as server based webs locally
> - just create all your local webs as local server based webs (subwebs under http://localhost/)
> - this lets you "test" as you go, and gives you access to all server based run time tools and features

Yeah, but to us it seems to then complicate the debugging processes
quite a lot, when you publish truly to a server there is much more
involved (things that can go wrong) than if I publish to a disk-based
web. We want to disaggregate the things that can go wrong and
simplify debugging issues as much as possible. We wish to take a
measured, deliberate, step by step approach to site development,
increasing the complexity as we go along. Hence: development,
staging/QA, production. But then this is not ultimately a decision
that you or I will have much say in. This is a corporation after
all...;)
>
> The FP SE under IIS will support 1 root web and unlimited subwebs
> Start by correctly installing the FP 2002 SE w/ all updates, then
configuring your root web in IIS for the FP SE
> Then use the FP SE admin (or open you localhost root web in FP to
 create/convert folders to subwebs) to create your individual
> subwebs for each "project"

We've done all that, and have no problems with what we have:
 
"if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

One other corporate kind of mandate is we must keep all meaningful
corporate site content out of wwwroot (a best practice from
somewhere), but NOT to remap the location of the root of the default
web site away from wwwroot (hence the complex vdir/subweb
architecture).
>
> For the FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions Support Center see:
> http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;en-us;fp10se

we used this link (as it turns out) (english link), and followed up
with the security patch.

Question 1:
Even though I never put any content in wwwroot (all I did was create a
> | virtualDir under the default website with name "sitename" which
> | pointed to "My Webs\sitename") yet somewhere along the line
> | "wwwroot\sitename" got created (as viewed from Win Explorer) with
> | content of 6 folders ("_private", 4 "_vtixxx" folders, and an
> | "images") all empty. Who/What created the real folder in wwwroot, and put
 the empty folders there? I thought vdirs were merely an aliasing
scheme to point a "name" that "appeared" to be in wwwroot to a
location somewhere else?
btw, can the location pointed to in a vdir be a UNC name?, a network
mapped drive?, or must it only be a location on the local machine?
See also question 6 below.

Question 2:
> | Speaking of Windows Explorer, there is a "web sharing" tab on the
> | explorer properties dialog for "sitename" in the "My Webs" folder ("My
> | Webs\sitename") which seems to contain an "alias" for the virtual
> | directory name created under the default web site in IISadmin. Are
> | "Web Sharing" aliases then nothing more than virtual dir names? Could
> | I in effect create a Virtual Dir in Explorer by adding a Web Sharing
> | alias to a folder?

Question 3:
> | There appears to be some subtle difference with the contents of "My
> | Webs\sitename" depending upon whether the content got there thru a FP
> | disk-based or FP server-based (http) publishing operation? What is
> | this difference?

Question 4:
> | There doesn't appear to be any right click properties dialog that
> | completely indicates what a folder's "type" is: virtual dir, Web,
> | SubWeb, disk-based, or server-based??? Even the folder icons seem
> | confusing: plain vanilla folder, vanilla with little globe in lower
> | right, vanilla with larger globe centered, and something that looks
> | like an opened cardboard box with a globe popping out. When I right
> | click, properties on these items, I can see no coherent, consistent
> | info pattern to indicate the differences. Is there anywhere where all
> | the web site/folder icons appearing in FP2003 and IIS Admin MMC are
> | documented (or can you at least explain the putative differences among the
 various folder icons used in FP folder view and IIS Admin snap-in)??

Question 5:
> | There seems to be a bewildering set of seemingly similar terminologies in
 use by IIS and FP2003. Is there anywhere a tutorial (or other
documentation,
 KB article, etc)that can precisely sort out (at least) the
> | following terms, and any differences in meaning from an IIS admin MMC
> | vs FP2003 vs IE vs WinExplorer vs FPSE2000 admin vs FPSE2002 Admin
> | perspective??:

> | -- Web
> | -- Virtual Web
> | -- Virtual directory
> | -- Server-based Web
> | -- Disk-based Web
> | -- SubWeb
> | -- Virtual SubWeb (is there such a thing?)
> | -- Web Folder
> | -- Web Client Network (appears in network places from time to time)
> | -- Server Extensions 2000 Web
> | -- Server Extensions 2002 Web (ie whats the diff tween FPSE2000 &
> | FP2002?)
> | -- Share
> | -- Web Share
> | -- Local Site
> | -- Remote Site

Question 6:
> | There have been comments here (on usenet) that you cannot turn vdirs into subwebs,
> | but I seem to be able to first create the vdir in IISadm, then right
> | click parent dir to create a FPSE extended web and give it the same
> | name as the vdir, and this seems to work. If I first create the FPSE
> | extended web that creates a "real" folder in wwwroot which is not what
> | I want. At any rate could this procedure be the source of the "real" dirs
in wwwroot, and the empty FP-ish directories (_vtixxx's) as well? BTW
are _vti dirs an FP thing, or an IIS thing?,
or an FPSE thing? Is there any known problem with this procedure?

Question 7:
> | Is there any kind of "Best Practice" documentation for all of this?

Question 8:
> | How can one best utilize "Add Network Places" with this stuff as
> | well? Apparently there used to be a notion in pre WinXP OS's of a "Web
Folders" folder, which capabilities now are present (fully or in
part??) in "network places". (The notion of a "Web Folders" folder
seems appealing as the presence or absence of a folder here would
presumably help sort out web and subwebs from vdirs and dirs -- this
sort out capability seems missing from "Network Places")

Question 9:
> | Last question (and the only thing that absolutely doesn't work -- no
> | matter what I do): when I right click on a FPSE extended web folder
> | in IISadmin, go to all tasks, one of the choices is "open with
> | frontpage" this always fails with message "you need to install
> | frontpage client to open a web with frontpage". I definitely have
> | FP2003 installed -- it can open sites both on local machine across
> | intranet, and even out on internet. I can publish to disk based
> | locations, local http destinations, and even to sites on internet
> | using SSL. Anyhow is there some confusion tween FP2003 and IIS 5.1 Admin?
> | (i.e. is what I'm seeing normal? because for some reason IIS admin was never
> | coded to recognize FP2003??), or is something with install wrong? I
> | have uninstalled/reinstalled IIS, FPSE2000, and FPSE2002 all to no
> | avail. Are others able to sucessfully open an FP2003 from the IIS
Admin "Open with Frontpage" task? This only happens for us with
FP2003, earlier versions of FP work fine. It's a minor annoyance at
this point, but even so....

One final comment: I haved searched through these Frontpage-related
and IIS-related newsgroups, the web, MSDN, Technet, Office Web, KB
database, all of microsoft.com (using google and more focused search
engines) without finding much in the way of factual detailed technical
info on "how things work" so any help you (or anyone else) can give
will be muchly appreciated. Is this perhaps misposted? Is there a
better newsgroup for this?

TIA

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