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Microsoft Corporation
Updated April 15, 1999
The Microsoft® FrontPage® 2000 Server Extensions are a set of programs on a Web server that support administering, authoring, and browsing a FrontPage-extended Web site.
The FrontPage Server Extensions use the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) or the Internet Server Application Programming Interface (ISAPI), the near-universal Web server extension mechanisms. They work with any standard Web server, including commercial Web servers from Microsoft, Netscape, Stronghold, and O'Reilly and Associates, and freeware and shareware servers such as Apache and NCSA. The server extensions are designed to be easily ported to all popular hardware and software platforms for cross-platform Web-server compatibility.
Communication between a client computer and a Web server containing the server extensions uses the same, open HTTP protocol that Web browsers on a client computer use to interact with a Web server. No file-sharing access on the Web server machine is needed, and neither FTP nor telnet access is required. No proprietary file system sharing calls are necessary to use the FrontPage Server Extensions.
When the FrontPage Server Extensions are installed on a Web server, FrontPage-extended web authoring and administering functionality are available from any computer that has the FrontPage client, whether the computer is on the Internet or on an intranet. The browse-time functionality of the server extensions is available from any Web browser.
FrontPage Server Extensions allow you to do the following:
This includes setting permissions for authors, administrators, and Web site visitors. The FrontPage Server Extensions program that supports administering FrontPage-extended webs is Admin.exe on UNIX systems and Admin.dll on Microsoft® Windows NT®-based systems.
This includes automatically maintaining hyperlinks, generating and maintaining navigation bars across all pages, and automatically formatting pages to give them a polished appearance. The FrontPage Server Extensions program that supports authoring FrontPage-extended webs is Author.exe on UNIX systems and Author.dll on Windows NT-based systems.
This includes interactive discussion groups, hit counters, and search forms. The FrontPage Server Extensions program that supports browse-time functionality in FrontPage-extended webs is Shtml.exe on UNIX systems and Shtml.dll on Windows NT-based systems.
The design of the FrontPage Server Extensions and the FrontPage client minimizes the need for costly file transfers over the Internet. When an author using FrontPage opens a FrontPage-extended web from a Web server containing the server extensions, information about the web, such as its hyperlink map, is downloaded to the client machine so that FrontPage can display the information. However, the full set of pages and other files that comprise the FrontPage-extended web remain on the Web server.
In FrontPage, a page is downloaded over the Internet only when it is opened for editing in FrontPage or in another Microsoft Office application. This is a very efficient mechanism: an entire Web site can be changed directly on a Web server at the cost of downloading and editing a single file. For example, the Include Page component in FrontPage can be used to include a company's address and phone number in a footer on every page of the company's Web site. If the phone number changes, only the page containing the address and phone number need be downloaded and opened using the FrontPage client. Once the phone number is updated and the page is saved, the phone number is re-included on all other pages on the Web server by the FrontPage Server Extensions.
On Microsoft® Windows®-based Web servers, the server extensions are integrated with the Microsoft® Visual SourceSafe™ version control system, which allows files to be checked in and out of the Web server. The server extensions also support "light" check in and check out, which do not require Microsoft Visual SourceSafe but still protect authors from overwriting files that are currently being used by another author.
Along with FrontPage, all Microsoft Office applications use the server extensions to open and save files that are stored in FrontPage-extended webs. Microsoft® Visual InterDev™ also uses the FrontPage Server Extensions for the same purpose.
Along with this document, Microsoft FrontPage Support offers a large set of Knowledge Base articles that address many issues that our customers experience. This information is free and quickly available at http://support.microsoft.com/support/ 
. If you are unable to find a resolution in our Knowledge Base, you can choose to get support through our online Web Response or call and talk directly with a support engineer. You can evaluate these support options at http://support.microsoft.com/support/contact/ .
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