Administering FrontPage Webs

If you create and edit FrontPage webs directly on a World Wide Web or intranet server, FrontPage offers a set of useful administrative tools for setting web permissions and limiting access to FrontPage webs from specified computers.

You set permissions for a FrontPage web in the FrontPage Explorer, using the Permissions command on the Tools menu. This displays the Permissions dialog box.

For each FrontPage web on your Web server, you can set the following types of permissions:

• Browsing permission gives a user, group of users, or specific workstations permission to view the FrontPage web after it has been published on the World Wide Web or your organization’s intranet.
  
  
• Authoring permission gives a user, group of users, or specific workstations permission to open the FrontPage web in the FrontPage Explorer and edit pages and files in the FrontPage Editor.
  
  
• Administering permission gives a user, group of users, or specific workstations permission to administer the current FrontPage web. An administrator can set permissions for other users and computer workstations.

  

  Web Permissions and the Root Web The root web is the top-level web on your Web server. All other FrontPage webs on the Web server inherit their permissions from the root web by default. In the FrontPage Explorer, you can assign unique permissions for any FrontPage web in the Settings tab of the Permissions dialog box.

FrontPage web permissions are hierarchical. This means that a user with administrative permissions also has authoring and browsing permissions; a user with authoring permissions also has browsing permissions. When you set permissions for administering, authoring, or browsing a FrontPage web, the Web server requests a name and password for any task that requires permissions; however, you may not see the prompt because some Web servers will authenticate your name and password using another method.

On some Web servers, you can also set permissions for computer workstations, based on their IP addresses. You can set permissions for a group of computers using the asterisk character (*) to create an IP address mask. For example, the IP address mask 127.*.*.* applies to all computers with IP addresses beginning with 127. In this scenario, a user, author, or administrator must not only have sufficient permissions to access the FrontPage web, but must also be working on a computer that has the appropriate level of group permissions. By default, all computers have permissions to browse to a FrontPage web.

Note You should not use IP address restrictions on computer networks that do not support fixed IP addresses.

When using Microsoft Internet Information Server or some versions of the Microsoft Personal Web Server, you can set permissions for users or groups of users that are known to the Web server. With these Web servers, you cannot use FrontPage to add new users or groups, or to set passwords. You must use the operating system’s features for controlling Web access.

With some versions of the Microsoft Personal Web Server, however, you cannot set permissions for users or groups of users that are known to the Web server. With these versions, all users on the network can browse to your FrontPage webs, and authoring is permitted only from the computer on which the Web server itself is installed.

If you use any other type of Web server, you must first add administrators, authors, and users, and then assign names and passwords before you can assign permissions.