Once you have your web content designed and authored, publish that content to your Virtual Server. The term "publish" when used in the context of the Web may seem like a complex concept, but it is nothing more than a fancy word for uploading content from your computer to a remote host (your Virtual Server).

Many popular HTML authoring packages have built-in publishing capabilities. These packages essentially use the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to transmit your web content from your computer to the remote host. You should not base your decision to select one HTML authoring program over another just because one can "publish" but the other cannot. You can publish your web content to your Virtual Server with any freely available FTP client such as WS_FTP, Fetch, or the FTP client built into your operating system.

Regardless of what method you use to publish your web content to your Virtual Server, the underlying pieces of information that are required in order to publish the content are the same:

• IP address or hostname of your Virtual Server
• Login name
• Login password
• Path where you would like the web content to be stored

All web content should be published to your usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs directory (unless you have modified the default value of the DocumentRoot directive). When your Virtual Server is configured, a file is created called index.php and stored in this directory. This is the default page that is displayed when you access your web site with a browser. You may upload your web content to the htdocs directory or into any subdirectory.

If you publish (or upload) a file named test.htm to your htdocs directory, you can access that file using the following URL:

http://www.yourcompany.com/test.htm

Likewise, if you were to create a subdirectory entitled documents in your htdocs directory, and then transfer a file info.html to that directory, it could then be accessed with the following URL:

http://www.yourcompany.com/documents/info.html

Publishing with an HTTP-Put-Capable Editor
Web publishing programs use different methods for uploading the pages to your Virtual Server. Some use FTP, others like FrontPage use a form of HTTP. Some programs like AOLPress use the HTTP Put method to upload pages.

Microsoft FrontPage
Enetrics Communications supports the Microsoft® FrontPage® 2000/2002 server extensions. If you have not used Microsoft FrontPage and would like to know more, see:

http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/

Installing FrontPage Extensions on Your Virtual ServerUnlike other publishing programs, FrontPage requires that you first install the FrontPage server extensions on the server on which you are going to publish your web pages. You can upload web pages created in FrontPage to a server that does not have the extensions, but many features such as counters, feedback forms, and navigation bars will not work. So if you want all your creative efforts to shine, install the FrontPage server extensions and then publish your web pages. The following are the steps for installing the FrontPage server extensions:

Installing FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions

• Connect to your Virtual Server with the SSH/Telnet program of your choice.
• Enter fp2kinstall to install the FrontPage 2000 extensions. Follow the prompts.

Note: If you have virtual subhosts configured on your Virtual Server, you will need to move them to the ~/www/vhosts directory before you can successfully install the FrontPage 2000 server extensions.

Installing FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions for Virtual HostsThe fp2kinstall script reads the httpd.conf file and detects virtual hosts. The script lists the virtual hosts and enables you to install the FrontPage extensions on each virtual host. The fp2kinstall script can be run each time you add a new virtual host. The disk space used to install to a virtual host is minimal compared to the first install (which takes 13 approximately megabytes).

Connecting to the Virtual Server with FrontPageOnce the extensions are installed, FrontPage can connect to the Virtual Server.

• On your computer, click Start | Programs | FrontPage. Now go to File | Open and type in the full URL of the domain you want to connect to (i.e. http://www.yourcompany.com).
• Click Open.
• At the prompt, type the administrator login name and password (which is the same login name and password you entered while running fp2kinstall).

Publishing a FrontPage WebAlthough you can connect to your Virtual Server, most of the time you will create FrontPage webs on your local computer rather than work online the whole time. However, after creating webs you will need to publish them.

Publishing a FrontPage Web on Your Virtual Server

• Click File/Publish | Web.
• In the FrontPage web box type http://www.yourcompany.com.
• Click Publish.
• Type your user name and password for the web (which publishes the web).

Note: You should always use the publish feature so FrontPage can recalculate the web site links for the server that is publishing. NEVER use FTP or any other editor in conjunction with FrontPage.

When the publish process is complete, your web site is ready to view. If you receive any errors such as a "time-out," you may need to recalculate the links manually.

Manually Recalculating Links

• Connect to your Virtual Server via Telnet.
• From the command prompt, type:

  % unlimit
  % virtual /usr/local/frontpage/<current_version>/bin/fpsrvadm.exe -o recalc -p 80 -m <hostname> -w <web>

Note: The above command beginning with "virtual " is typed on one line. The –m <hostname> option is used for virtual hosts only. Replace <hostname> with the domain name of the virtual host. If you are recalculating the Virtual Server's web, type " " for <hostname>. The <web> option is replaced with a / for the root web or the name of the sub web.

• From the command prompt, enter top to watch the fpsrvadm.exe process until it is complete.
• To exit the Telnet session, enter exit.

• Connect to your server via Telnet.
• From the command prompt, type:

  % cd ~/home/enetrics/www/enetrics.com/_vti_pvt

• From the command prompt, type:

  % pico service.grp

• Add the new administrator to the end of the administrators line, and then save and exit the file.
• From the command prompt, type (where new_user_id equals the new admin ID):

% htpasswd service.pwd new_user_id

If you are only changing the password, then skip steps 3 and 4. You can change the password in the FrontPage Explorer if you have not forgotten the old password.