Re: [ProgSoc] NT/IIS web -> linux+apache

[Telford Tendys <telford@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

> Unfortunately, the people who build content for this monstrosity (most of 
> whom have rudimentary, if that, web design skills) all use FrontPage to 
> put their flashing buttons onto the server. This is a requirement (it 
> sux, I know) of the server, whatever it is. I'm currently attempting to 
> get FrontPage extensions loaded onto my linux box to test, but I'd be 
> interested to hear from anyone who has previously attempted something 
> along these lines to save myself any unneccessary hassle.

I may have no idea what I'm talking about here but from memory FrontPage
uses a huge bitmap background for each page where the bitmap basically
contains the whole page, then they use either a USEMAP or some
Javascript extensions to attach links to regions of the page. It's
a crappy method that totally defeats the idea of HTML but it impresses
the hell out of clueless managers and (could be wrong) doesn't make
huge demands on the server (except massive bandwidth which apache can
deliver).

My advice is to wade in and try getting a page through apache, then
look carefully at where the problems pop up. First problem could be
that FrontPage requires some stupid browser plug-in which has a magic
MIME type to activate it. Apache
has a list that associates MIME types with file extensions so you
might have to edit that. There might also be some crappy thing where
several pages are stored to allow for a handful of different screen
sizes, you might need a perl CGI script to handle those because it will
inspect header data in the query, figure out resolution, etc.

Do you have any publicly available pages I can peek at?

> I'd love to be able to prove linux not only a viable, but intelligent, 
> choice here at work. There are a few M$ lovers here who keep talking up 
> M$ products, to the detriment of performance. That and if I can get all 
> the stuff I'm responsible for off NT then I won't have to deal with the 
> stupid thing any more.

Well good luck trying!

	- Tel

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