Hi all,
I have had several folks ask me about FrontPage Server Extensions on a
Linux box running Apache Web Server. This is outside of my experience
and I am curious about others experiences with the server extensions
regardless of the platform they run it on.
The following are my concerns based on things people have told me about
their expreriences in the past.

1: Security: Most of the people I have heard of getting hacked on Linux
web servers were running FrontPage extensions. What I don't know is if
they were also running an  insecure service such as telnet or FTP which
opened the security hole. Currently we do all of our uploads to the web
server via sftp and have not had a security incident as far as I can
determine.

2: Backup:  FrontPage Extensions seem to do some funny things to a Web
Server around backup. I heard of someone who created a test site with
FrontPage and loaded it directly onto a Linux server running the
Extensions without keeping a local copy. Later when he tried to download
it to put someplace else, he couldn't. He kept getting an error when it
was almost complete. A cd was burned for him and there were issues with
some of the files and so he still didn't have a complete copy. How does
one get an accurate backup when using the extensions?

3: Open Standards:  I have heard that the further into the FrontPage
Extensions you go, the more you are tied to IE running on a Microsoft 32
bit operating system. My view of the web is that it is a place for open
standards and it shouldn't matter what OS or browser you use (provided
that the technology is fairly up to date). When I look in our web logs,
we have people accessing our sites from Macs and Linux boxes. Granted
the vast majority are Windows users but a school web site is a place to
disseminate information to our constituencies and I don't want it to be
unfiendly to users of minority platforms.
Anyone have any thoughts on the subject? Thanks.
Dave

David Tisdell. Computer Coordinator
Mt. Mansfield Union High School
211 Browns Trace
Jericho, VT 05661
802-899-4690 (Voice)
802-899-2904 (Fax)
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