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I'm shopping for hosting services that offer FrontPage Server Extensions. Some services ask me to specify whether I want my site to be served on a Unix platform or on a Windows NT or 2000 platform. Are there any differences as far as FrontPage's Web design features are concerned?

Bradley Mcdonald via the Internet

Many of FrontPage's most appealing features, such as the ability to author directly on the Web server, add specialized Web components, use shared borders and other design features, and work directly through Access databases, depend on the FrontPage Server Extensions being installed on the server. FrontPage is one of those rare Microsoft programs that doesn't live in a Microsoft-only world. The server extensions support several different Web servers running on various flavors of Linux and Unix. But these extensions work better on Microsoft servers, especially Internet Information Server 4.0, than on Unix servers. Here are a few of the major differences.

First, setting permissions is different for Windows NT/2000based FrontPage webs than Unix-based webs, although the overall idea is the same. On Windows NT/2000 with a Microsoft IIS server, users and groups depend on Windows NT, not on FrontPage. If you want only specified users to have authoring access, for example, the server administrator will have to add those users and set permissions in their log-on accounts. A Unix server will have a list of users and groups that have access to the Web server distinct from those with access to the operating system itself. Again, the administrator must set them up. In both cases, the possibility that your hosting service won't accommodate you is entirely likely, although it might go so far as to let you password-protect individual directories. But that's a different issue.

Second, Unix-based servers may not provide access to FrontPage's Insert | Database command. FrontPage's built-in database features depend on the FrontPage Server Extensions for authoring, and they also rely on Active Server Pages (ASP) technology for viewing in a browser. Only Microsoft IIS 4.0 and Personal Web Server 4, neither of which is available for Unix, have this capability built in (although this capability can be added to IIS 3.0 with a download). Unix servers can support ASP through an add-on called Chili!ASP, but the ASP support isn't as strong as it is with IIS. A Chili!ASP-enabled server still won't let FrontPage authors use the Insert | Database command or create new ASP pages on the Unix server through FrontPage. (It will let you edit them, however.) See Microsoft Knowledge Base articles Q225204 and Q219646 (search.support.microsoft.com/kb/) for more information on these limitations.

Content created with Windows-specific applications might not work on Unix servers, even with FrontPage Server Extensions installed. For example, FrontPage's native database type is Microsoft Access, but there's no Unix version of this application, so Access databases must be converted to dBase format before they will work on a Unix server. Similarly, search and indexing systems built on the Microsoft Index Server will not work on Unix servers.

If your current Unix-based ISP does not offer the server extensions with your account, by all means request them, but don't assume that the ISP will comply. Many ISPs are concerned about security, the danger of veering from standard server setups, and users being able to save documents directly from the FrontPage client to the Web site. You might point your hosting service's rep to Ready-to-Run Software's site at www.rtr.com, which offers information about running the server extensions on Unix platforms. ISPs will also find detailed information about the server extensions on the Microsoft site, particularly at the FrontPage Web Workshop (msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/workshop/languages/fp/) and the FrontPage Server Extensions Resource Kit (SERK), at officeupdate.microsoft.com/frontpage/wpp/serk.