FrontPage Extension Question / Request...

nhouse

nhouse

Verified User
Joined
Nov 26, 2003
Messages
152
Location
Tennessee
Hello Everyone,

I search regularly through the forum to see what improvements or suggested bug fixes there may be within DA, with it's regard to MS FrontPage. I REALLY enjoy DA and it's continued development and reliability... however... (yea you knew this was coming, right?)

Even though I am not totally bothered with the lack of some of the FP administrative features, a few of my clients are. Ok, all of you old timers here at the forum... have you found any way to combat these issues? Some of you may want clarification of these statements, so for you:

1. Yes, you can install / uninstall the FP extensions through the control panel, BUT it seems that the administrative side does not get copied to the proper place. Regardless, the administrative features do not work.. ie, user management, FP password protection, child web administration, etc. Granted, you can do basic publishing without many errors. Please see the attachment for an example of an administrative error.

2. Also, some of the web-bots seem to be malfunctioning. Example... you can create a contact form in the top level of the FP site... then try creating the same one in a sub-directory and it will not work properly and gives error messages.

3. These issues may not hinder the hard core hand coders or even myself with my mid-level skills... BUT they are pretty hard to deal with some of my clients who are continuing to ask why this doesn't work or that doesn't work.... and the fact that they cannot easily complete the same administrative tasks that they have been used to doing on other servers with the same LAMP environment that I have on my server... with the exception of the different control panel.

To finish this up, I will confess openly here that I'm not a server guru or even as well versed in RedHat as I ought to be... luckily I have others in my office that handle those things. But, I am directly involved with the end users whom use our web services and have to be accountable to them. THUS my lenghty message here with the hopes that someone will help resolve these issues.

I also know that John and his team are working hard to improve DA and add to it's functionality. So please do not get me wrong... I appreciate their product and their efforts. However after reading through other posts I understand that FP may not be as high on the priority list as other features but it is still important to a lot of people... so I wonder if the development team has ever considered outsourcing this problem to other folks who may be able to save us all a few gray hairs? (and I'm certainly not referring to me)

Thank you for taking the time to read over my ramblings and I appreciate your input.

Randy (CCSi tech)
Paying Customer and Fan of DA
 

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I'd bet the problem is none of us understand what FPX is supposed to do on our Linux systems; we just follow install instructions.

I've run servers running FPX under both the Cobalt RaQ and Plesk control panels, for at least four years, and frankly I have no idea what I should be looking for or seeing.

I've never had a client complain, but I presume that's because they only do basic publishing.

Does the company that ported FPX say these things should work?

Where is the specific documentation on these issues under Linux?

Jeff
 
Jeff...

I am also unsure of how the FP extensions are copied when you execute the "install frontpage extensions" script in the DA control panel. I am not sure if there is an installer does the work -or- if the script simply copies files from a directory somewhere in an attempt to replicate the process on demand.

I do know that on other boxes running Linux / Apache / MySql / PHP with control panels like Cpanel, the administrative features work. This is the thing that befuddles me... if it works on one box, it should on the other... unless the DA panel has a much different file architecture, but those things are way beyond me.

Input from anyone else... please?
 
I agree nhouse.

Do you want me to give you a testing account on my testing server, so you can see if the problem is just with your box and if FPX works on my testbed system?

Jeff
 
I have wondered the same thing also...

I am having similar problems with FP...first of all being that forms will ONLY work when acessed via http://www.domainname.com, if someone comes into the site via http://domainname.com (without the www) and tried to fill out the form, they are greeted with a username/password popup.

I also do not have any of the web administration functions working.

Has anyone found out more about this in the past month?
 
Hi, unfortunately this must be way down in the priority list for the developers. I did figure out a way to make sure my forms work. BUT it is still important to me to be able to use the administrative functions that FP offers. I sure wish that John and crew would fix this situation. It would give me more of a reason to brag on DA to folks ;)
 
Hello,

What's the "official" way to access the admin section? I believe I have seen it working on our build system, but that was after several hours of poking (can't say I remember what I did to get it to work). I'll take another look at it, but you can try installing the extensions again. I do know that I changed the install process for them a few months ago. (not the per-domain extension.. the whole program with customapache)

cd /usr/local/directadmin/data/customapache
./build update
./build frontpage_ext

Give that a try and let me know how the admin section is *supposed* to work and what it isn't currently doing :)

John
 
John...
Thank you so much for the reply. I will be quick to say that I am not an expert on the matter... but I will provide you with as much info as I can to try and get these issues worked through. FP can be a bother at times, even for me... but some of our clients really do need those functions to work for them. I will post more here later today.
 
Hey,

This may or may not be relevent...

I compared the FP default Virtual container, from a RH 9 box w/FP, with the FP default Virtual container on a DA box and here's what the one on the RH 9 box had:

<VirtualHost _default_:8090>
DocumentRoot /usr/local/frontpage/version5.0/admin-exes
DirectoryIndex fpadmcgi.exe
MIMEMagicFile /dev/null
<Directory /usr/local/frontpage/version5.0/admin-exes/>
AddHandler cgi-script .exe
Options ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Also, in each of the Virtual containers that have FP installed these are in the container:

MIMEMagicFile /dev/null
<Directory /var/www/virtuals/domainname.com/public_html>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>

The only difference is the: MIMEMagicFile /dev/null and AllowOverride All.

I'm not sure if this helps but, it's a start!

David
 
John...
I am attaching three different screen shots to three separate replies so that you can see a bit more detail, I'll also try giving a short description about each one. I am using my own account as the test subject. Oh, I have removed and applied the extensions a couple of times. I have even deleted and recreated accounts just to test this out.

First screen shot is attached to this message. It shows how a client would typically access the FP admin feature. You access it directly from within the FP application... please see the attached image.
 

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Second screen shot is what we get now when we try to bring up the admin area. You get the old "page cannot be found" error. In the image attached you can see where it tries to execute from.

Normally the EXE would generate a page in the end user's browser where they can create users, authors, etc. and set unique permissions for each. Also, and this is very important to some people, you use this tool to create FP "child webs."
 

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Third screen shot is of the directory where the EXE should be... but isn't. I assume that when the FP extensions are applied, the executables should be copied to:

_vti_adm (and) _vti_aut
 

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Last edited:
Sorry for the multiple posts... but I think you might like to see these screen caps.

Here is a screen cap from another account that I manage on a different server system. It shows what "should" be displayed in the client's browser.

John, if I can give you any more info at all to help with this, just let me know.
 

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Hello,

Alright, I've just tested it on our test system to the fpadmcgi.exe and I can confirm it *does* work *without* the file being there.

I'm pretty sure it's using the /usr/local/frontpage/version5.0/exes/_vti_bin/_vti_adm/fpadmcgi.exe file.. because I renamed it temporarily and it stopped working, then changed it back and it worked again. So it appears as though mod_frontpage handles the path for you.

Let me know if you have that file.. or if creating it (and path) works for you.

John
 
Hmmmmmmmmm...
John, thanks for the information. I can tell you as well that ours is not working. Let me look into the data that you listed and see if everything is the same on our server and I'll let you know what I find.

"If" we discover that it is a problem with our installation of DA, what would we do to correct it? Well, I guess you can address that after I investigate further. Thanks again for your assistance.

EDIT: DUH! I guess that is what you were telling me in the message above... sorry!
 
FP forms

Yes, I am also having some similar problems. One is the form asking the user for a user name and password if they access the website without the www.

Also, when I publish through FrontPage I get "an error occurred accessing your Frontpage web files. Authors - if authoring...
"WebMasters - please see the server's system administrator.
 
Ok, folks... I have run the commands:

cd /usr/local/directadmin/data/customapache
./build update
./build frontpage_ext

I have also tried opening straight from a browser and I still can't access the administrative EXE's. Let me do a wee bit more investigation and I'll reply in a while. PLEASE continue following this thread... thanks!
 
FP forms

nhouse said:
Hi, unfortunately this must be way down in the priority list for the developers. I did figure out a way to make sure my forms work. BUT it is still important to me to be able to use the administrative functions that FP offers. I sure wish that John and crew would fix this situation. It would give me more of a reason to brag on DA to folks ;)
Click to expand...

Hello,
So what was your solution to the forms not working correctly when someone types in http://website.com instead of http://www.website.com

Do you have to edit the .htaccess file with some kind of redirect or is there a better fix?

Thanks,

Mark
 
Hmm FP problems. Any word on correcting these issues? My clients have been using FP on a linux machine for many years with very little problems. They have full administrative access as well. This is very important to get right. You should be able to submit a form regardless if you accessed the site via www or not.
 
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