mhonarc-users

Re: "Push" mirroring of servers

1998-02-27 18:31:42
Someone said of the latest FrontPage that it "does its own
publishing."

What I assumed when I heard that was that Microsoft was
developing a pattern of service where a server would accept
uploads by some means (possibly a form submission with INPUT
type=file) and the author tools would know the ropes.  The people
pusing NT as the server option clearly are not ignorant that
there is a market for controlled update of small-customer
websites hosted on the server.  I don't know what they are
thinking, butI would be curious to know.

Actually, the HTTP protocal supports the ability of clients to update a
server's data.  However, most servers usually disable this feature
since it is security risk.

Netscape's server products allow you to configure the HTTP server to
allow a client to push data to the server.  I think there is support
for this in Apache also.  I believe there is some non-M$ software that
can do what FrontPage does with IIS.  The problem with M$ is I think
some of their stuff is proprietary.  Plus, dealing IIS sucks.  User
security is tied directly to the WinNT file security so you cannot keep
Web accounts separate from NT accounts.  Also, if you decode not to use
ASP, you have to go thru loops to get an alternative scripting language
like Perl to run correctly under it.  v2 and v3 where not too bad, but
v4 of IIS is worse.

The main problem with this approach is that if you rely on the use of
an HTTP server through an ISP, you have to go thru them to configure
the server to allow clients to update server content.  I doubt many
will do this since it can be a pain to administer.  It is easy to tell
users to use FTP in a particular directory so no extra
security/password stuff have to be done with the HTTP server.

        --ewh

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