Hair Loss and Extensions

(or how I learned to plug Frontpage Extensions into a Plesk subdomain)

- Part 1

We use Plesk 7 to manage out hosting servers. I like its interface, it is easy to use, and I find my clients have few problems navigating it.

I recently had a new client with a primary domain and a few subdomains utilize our hosting services. It was our first hosting contract which involved subdomains and a large population of publishers using Microsoft products, including Frontpage, Word, and Excel to keep portions of their site updated.

During deployment of the site I realized that Plesk 7 doesn't support Frontpage extensions for subdomains. This was a disappointment, and we worked to try and enable functionality of the Microsoft Products using FTP as a methodology for file transfer. As usual we found that Microsoft supports their own methods better than standards and it became apparent that implementation of Frontpage extensions on the subdomains would make the editing, updating and management of the site easer.

I spent a bunch of time reading up on the Frontpage extensions, and especially as they related to Plesk, and specifically Plesk 7. There is not a lot of detail. I found a great Frontpage support resource, and details on installing from scratch on a Linux/Apache server. Unfortunately that is not exactly what I needed. Plesk does some strange things, like has its own suexec etc. So we needed to fit into that system.

Further research yielded a way to manually clean an installation that is not behaving, and this lead me to realize that the extensions are not all that foreign, They are just a bunch of directories, .htaccess, executable and configuration files. I created a blank test domain and traced the files and directories created and came up with a recipe that worked for me.

Caveats/Warnings:

1. If you edit the web site settings in Plesk after you make these changes, Plesk will overwrite your changes to the domain httpd.include file

2. If you reboot the server Plesk will overwrite the changes to the domain httpd.include file

3. File ownership and permissions are critical, pay careful attention

4. I did not spend the time to script recreation of the environment in the event of corruption

5. If you follow these instructions in a production environment without first testing them you deserve the lynching you get, and don't blame me.

Considerations:

1. You may want to remove FTP access after this because all management can be accomplished through Frontpage, and ftp users can corrupt files. To do this clear the FTP password in Plesk

2. Be sure and test your changes and familiarize yourself with the files and structures before going to a live environment

Ok enough gas bagging..... Part 2 will be coming up next...