You create a child web for Discus.

I had installed Discus "inside" my website and of course FP went around and modified the HTML pages to its liking confusing Discus. I tried to repair the HTML pages manually but it was a futile exercise. Finally I did as I said above. Everything seems to work now.

I have the following setup. In my PC I use the FP Web Server but this should work with any local server such as W95 Personal Server or NT WS Peer Server. My web is defined as the root web.

If you set it up like this you may create a child web say,

http://mycomputer/board

Then install Discus in the

mycomputer/board

subdirectory. FP will "know" it is a separate web and not touch it even though it is a subdirectory. It will not even show the directory when you open the root web.

If and when you publish your web, say to the Internet, Discus will not be transferred. Make sure you also define the subdirectory

http://mywebsite/board

as a child web. This is very important or else FP will think that it is one of its subdirectory and do its thing. If you have other child webs transfer them individually, not together with the root web, so FP does not go into the "board" child web.

If and when you publish make sure your links are correctly set to the Internet locations inside Discus HTML and CGI files. This requires a lot of File Search and Replace.

If you do not install Discus in your PC then only define the child web in the Internet site. In this case if you back up your board to your PC you may copy it to any directory not related to your local Web Server, away from FP reach.

One last thing, always move Discus via FTP, never with Frontpage.

I hope this helps.

Lucho

www.lucho.com

I'm having a little trouble following your directions Lucho. I set up a child web on my local personal web server called discus. I don't have Perl installed on my local machine with the personal web server. So I'm not sure what you mean by installing Discus in the diretory created by FP for the child web. Anyway I imported the files from my web hosting service into the local child web directory called discus.

Everytime I publish my web site pages to my web host FP parses all the files and directories on the web site and adds a directory called _vti_cnf to every subdirectory and adds some configuration files there. FP also parses all the html files and adds it's own html code to what it finds.

I have not found any way to tell FP not to do this. So in short I feel like there is going to be problems for FP users and the Discus product. Either Microsoft is going to have to provide a way to disable this action in FP or Discus is going to have to provide a work around. There is also a third option, and that is FP users can't use Discus.

Here is some information I have found with some brief internet research on Front Page extensions. Unfortunately, it looks like there is no easy way to tell FP98 to ignore the Discus board. Further unfortunately, I have looked at some pages that FP98 takes the liberty of editing for you, and it is not possible for Discus to read this format, so at this point I do not anticipate that a workaround will be implemented into the Discus program itself.

Quote:

You should contact your host about this and have them create the child web for you. in some situations with the FP98 server extensions, there is a patch that must be installed to allow the end user to create child webs and some administrators are reluctant to install this patch as it will affect other situations.

I start FP, then select to create a new FP one page web. I then change the directory to the one I want my web to be placed in, i.e. c:\clients\webs\johndoe. FP will advise such directory doesn't exist, I elect to create it and it creates the web where I want it to be on my drive. I then either work with the default index.html it creates automatically or delete it and start my own.

FP is a complex product as is the case with all Microsoft Products but I'll try to shed some light. FP has something they call the <Root> web and then something else called <child> web. Basically it's a method they use to divide up a web site among several people and allowing the web master to delegate tasks among the group. A web master can assign permissions on each <child> web giving people greater or less access to the information there. So it provides a way to control large web sites. A child web is essentially a subdirectory with permissions assigned by a web master at the root level.

Ok, so how does this apply to the problem at hand? I'm not sure. When I installed Discus the first time on my web host I did not use FP to create my discus directory. So FP was not aware that discus was on the server. It wasn't until I published a page to the <root> that FP noticed and made changes to the discus directory and contents. So FP is an aware program that is constantly and relentlessly maintaining links, associations, and permissions in the files and directories on the web site.

So far I have not found a way to get around this other than having a seperate web site without FP.

Thanks, Steve. Here is my continued uninformed about FP98 self continuing to shine through. What if you created a child web for the Discus directory before installing Discus. Then you install Discus by FTP to the directory that you just created as a child web. Finally, whenever you publish your main web site, you don't publish the child web, which then theroetically FP wouldn't even look at?

Ihave Discus running locally on my Win95 PC with FP and PWS and it works fine so far but I have some of the Discus stuff outsifde the area that FP knows about as I recall. The scripts site in a Scripts folder above wwwroot folder and only the messages/clipart/icons folder sit in directory in the wwwroot folder. Discus Admin stuff sits outside of Webshare directory altogether - this follows the setup guidleines for NT server which assume one has console access to the machine as I recall.

I've not had the chance to try installing Discus on an ISP system with FP cos those I can access with FP on don't give me CGI access.

I suspect the problem may be that in most ISP setups with FO ine cannot access areas outside of FP 'view' and it's known that FTP'ing to FP 'controlled' spoace can screw the FP extensions so some ISPs who offer FP extensions don't permit FTP access and FP extensions on the same account

Typically a remote user cannot change access permissions either in this situation - esp if on an NT server rather than a UNIX server.

OTOH I have read than if one creates the file structure with FP even if these FP published files Discus files are corrupted by this process then one can FTP files of the same name over the top of them and they'll be OK - just don't evet open them with FP Editor after that!

So I reckon if you create a Child web and publisg Discus files up to create the file structure in the subweb then FTP same files over the top you should be OK - FP treat the root web and child webs each as separate entities and one can only publish to one at a time so should be no risk of screwing Discus after that if in a Child web and you don''t use FP to publish to that Discus Chilweb again.

I think this makes sense but may be hard to explain effectively in writing.

Ig you can access web space outside the FP controlled area of your web space via a browser (ie. http://whatver then you should need to go thro this rigmarole anyway.

But is you haven't got CGI access - rather than FP bot/extensions access anyway then you're screwed before you start. That's worth finding out first off.

BTW if you want to run Discus on a local machine for testing and so on the you need to install ActiveState Perl - there's a link to download somewhere on the Discus site and instructions in Discus Installation for Win95/NT on setting it up - works a treat if a bit slow on my old 75Mhz Pentium with 48MB RAM with PWS and FP 98.

Hope this helps a bit.

Andrew

What I think - I'm no server guru or heavy 'techie' is that if your FTP root is above yor FP web root then you'd have little difficulty - assuming you had the approritate version of Perl installed on the server and the ISP allowed you to run Perl scripts from a directory above the FP web root - I have FP extensions on web space provide 'free' with an ISP account - a rare treat in the UK - and I can FTP into areas above the FP web root but this free web space doesn't allow running of any CGI/Perl stuff only FP extensions - else I reckon I could set it up fine (well I think so).

FP extensions can be installed and run on a wide range of Unix variants and NT - Nt would probably be trickier to set up on remotely but even so a 'complinat' ISP coul;d help you out - but if you're runningon free rather than commercial web space I think you may be 'barking up the wrong tree' - also many ISPs who 'offer' FP support know very little about it and tell you all sorts of nonsense - I feel that if you want good FP support with an ISP then find a specialist - incidentally many of these use Unix servers with FP rather than NT - in fact FP extensions can do a bit 'more' on Unix that NT (wierd or what?)- of course if you also want ASP and MS SQL server then you're limited to NT.

So in summary it's all down to getting the ISP to configure your space the way you want it - and they'll not be keen to do that on 'free' space - unless you're very lucky - in which case please let me know who your ISP is ;->

Hope this helps.

You might consider whther you neeed/want FP extensions on your host space anyway - FP is still a very fine tool (IMO) even when creating sites which will be hosted on servers with FP support - I did this for a tyear before getting access to sa host server with FP support - which was 'late arrival' with many ISPs in the UK.

Forgot to mention WRT to having or not having FP support on remote host that I have a site under development on a Unix/Apache ISP server without FP extensions which I'm developing with FP that has a Discus forum 'embedded' in a frameset and it looks sweet.

So maybe switch ISPs to one who can accomodate both FP and FTP and CGI, or to an ISP which does al but FP support or get your ISP to unistall FP support on your web space and use FTP instead to load?

Lots of folk develop with FP - probably using a staging server with FP support such as PWS (on the same machine) or perhaps a departmental in-house server on a LAN then upload via FTP to remote host servers without FP suuort - OK makes FP support on the remote host site publishing and management a bit easier but if you're not using the run time 'bots' - like Discussion Group (not likely if you have Discus), FP Search, FP Forms Results, then you'll not miss that much. And all this funtionality can be done - and improved upon with CGI scripts.

Just my opinion.

Ok, finally got it going. Lucho is correct. There are two methods that you can use with FP to create the discus directory on your web server:

1. Create a child web on your local personal web server and call it discus, then publish this child web to your web host. This will create a discus directory on your web host through FP.

2. Create your child web directly on your web server using FP.

The first option did not work for me. The second option seems to work.

Once you create the directory with FP then go through the normal Discus install and put your HTML files in the directory that you created with FP. Like all things in life, It's simple once you figure it out.

Steve,

Could you enlighten us all (especially me) just how you went about doing #2? I searched newsgroups and the web for a few hours a couple nights ago and couldn't find any documentation anywhere for this. I would like to make some kind of hints document for our Resource Center about this, so it would help to know what you clicked on. Thanks.

Open the any web on the remote server which has FP extensions using FP Explorer and then use File/New/FrontPage Web - not soooo difiicult ;->

I agree that MS FP 'terminology' can be a bit arcane - took me ages to grasp it in the beginning (but maybe I'm a bit thick cos I'm ofetn 'defeated' by the new terminiologies that MS seem to invent all the time?).

Maybe Kevin it's time to buy a copy of FP98 - FP server extensions are available for many Unix/webserver combos (as well as for NT/web server combos) and get it set up for support and tesing purposes - there are said to be 500,000 FP users 'out there'.

One of the main advanategs of using FP with a renmote server with FP server extensions installed is that it makes publishing (and site management)a snap - and one can ecven edit HTML on remote host on-line in real-time if you want - ie. makes remote host appear just as if it was a local server (eg. PWS) on your own desktop machine.

Andrew is correct. The FP program has two modes of operation. One through connection to the local web server installed on your personal computer and the other through a connection on your web host via the internet. The second option allows you to update your web pages in real time. Which means you can open up the wysiswyg page editor and access files on the web host, make modifications and save them in real time. Another thing you can do in real time is create child webs. Option #2 above. Hope this clears it up.

One other thing, by doing this action it apparently fools FP into thinking that everything is ok with this directory so therefore do nothing to it. Microsoft in all their wisdom and glory may some day change the program to work differently on this level and by doing so, screw everybody up that is using Discus. I believe that it is an issue that needs to be addressed a little deeper by the devolopers of Discus. Or at least be aware of the situation. It may come back to haunt us. Just my 2 cents worth.

A good rule of thumb for future FP updates and upgrades would be to backup your Discus board before you start using your upgraded FP just to be on the safe side.

Did I read somewhere about a backup program for the Discus board? If it's not already done then it needs priority, I think.

I believe that it is an issue that needs to be addressed a little deeper by the devolopers of Discus. Or at least be aware of the situation.

We will update our documentation. Additionally, we will be developing a "Data Recovery" utility for Discus 3.0 (pro and free) which will allow you to recover from corruption problems such as those caused by editing a page with FP. We will also shortly put up a "Having Discus coexist with FP" page in our resource center. However, it will almost likely always be our policy to treat modifications made by FP as corruption and not as normal.

Did I read somewhere about a backup program for the Discus board?

Yes, this will be included in the Discus 3.0 pro add-on. Click here for more information. We've decided on using the unix tar format for the backups created by Discus, so you can use the Discus backup/restore to read the backups, or you can extract files on your local machine. More on this will be posted in a couple weeks to the plans for Discus 3.0 subtopic on this board.

Kevin, you are on top of this. Congratulations on a winning product. I've been looking for something like this board for quite some time.

Steve

I'm not sure I'd quite agree that FP has twp modes of operation - ie. local server and remote server - it's more correct to say that it treats any FP enabled web server in the same way I think whether that server happnes to be remote, on a local LAN or on the same machine, and whther that server is on a Win 95 platform or an NT platform or a Unix plaform and regardless of what the web server software is - essentially to FP any webserver that has FP Server extensions installed looks 'the same' to FP - quite a neat 'trick' I think - so then one can open a 'web' on any FP enabled web server wherever it is and treat it in the same way. So one can for example 'reverse publish' ie. publish from remote host to local machines web server or for that matter to local machines file system (outside) the local (if any web server). All those 'extra files' that FP creates along with a web enable this to 'happen' along with the FP Server extensions.

In essence FP Server extensions are just a set of compiled CGI programs (actually communicate via CGI on some platforms - but implemented as DLLs on NT and Win 95 as I recall) which have the same functionality regardless of platform.

Does this help to make sense of it?

It's quite a revelation to open and edit a remote web on-line in realtime for the first time, not that one would often do this - tho I do know of novices in the US where there are no local call charges for Net access who create directly to remote host servers all the time and weren't aware that one could do anything else - normally one would use a staging server either on the same machine or a local LAN.

Yes Andrew, I know the situation with FP. But to cut through all the techno-speak, I am aware that you can use FP to log into any web host, provided you have the permission set up (ie., name, password) to access any web host with FP extensions. But for the sake of brevity I broke it down into two basic ways to access a web host with FP. Either locally or remotely. I generally create my pages locally on my pc and then publish the pages to my web host. It's faster than loging on to my host with FP and creating pages there.

It is also possible to use FP in a LAN WAN environment with say NT or Linux with proxy servers and firewalls using either ISS or Apache web servers and access information over the in-house network. But why get so technical? I think everyone who uses FP will know what I'm talking about.

Steve
Sorry to have upset you.
I thought this may be of interst to Kevin - and others - who are self-professed novices with FP. I found these FP concepts quite hard to grasp initially since the MS FP 'manual' doesn't do a great job of explaining their terminology IMO.
Any info that maybe helps FP users get Discus up and running and which may help the Discus folk support us seems worth sharing.
FP seeks to 'hide' technicalities of the Net/Web from users to make their lives 'easier'- and generally succeds in that goal - but sometimes it helps to have a look 'under the hood'.