MORE INFORMATION
Following is a list of items that may cause excessive resource usage,
particularly when the number of FrontPage extended virtual servers or
the number of FrontPage subwebs on a given server is large.
Creating or deleting Root Webs, SubWebs, and Executable Directories
When you create or delete Root Webs, subwebs and executable
directories, FrontPage reads and writes entries in the IIS Virtual
Roots section of the Windows NT Registry. The Application Program
Interface which IIS and FrontPage Server Extensions use to read and
write these entries must read the entire list, append or delete an
entry, and then rewrite the entire list. This causes noticeable delays
when you create or delete Webs, or install extensions into new Webs.
This also causes problems if multiple users author Webs at the same
time. For example, one user may have the list of virtual roots locked
for an update while another user attempts to write to it. Errors in
the virtual roots of IIS as represented in Event Viewer or Internet
Service Manager may slow down the process even further.
FrontPage creates seven to eight virtual roots per Root Web (depending
on whether or not you already have a global mapping for "/cgi-bin")
and six virtual roots per subweb. Since each FrontPage Web always
defines these virtual roots, the more FrontPage Root Webs or subwebs
there are on a given machine, the slower the performance of FrontPage
authoring will be.
The best workaround to prevent this delay is to limit the number of
virtual Roots and the number of FrontPage subwebs. In practice the
number of virtual servers (and thus the number of Root Webs) is
limited by spreading the virtual servers over multiple computers, but
it is possible to limit the number of FrontPage subwebs allowed on a
single computer. New FrontPage subwebs can only be created by
FrontPage Administrators. Therefore, you can avoid creating an
excessive number of subwebs (and virtual roots) by granting only
authoring privileges instead of FrontPage administrative privileges to
the users.
When you mark a directory as executable, a virtual root is created.
For each directory you mark as executable, you add one virtual root.
To prevent excessive delays in FrontPage Web performance, limit the
number of folders marked as executable. One way to limit the number of
executable directories is to establish a single, shared executable
folder which contains the shared scripts. Any user who takes
advantage of the shared scripts should reference the shared executable
folder and therefore would not require individual executable folders.
You can limit the ability of FrontPage users to mark directories as
executable by setting the NoExecutableCGIUpload=1 flag in the
Frontpg.ini file.
For additional information about the configuration variables used in theFrontpg.ini file, click the article number below
to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
162145 FP97: Configuration Settings for Windows NT Servers
Application of Permissions
IIS implements security on Webs through NT File System (NTFS)
permissions. FrontPage Server Extensions apply permissions to a Web by
checking the file system file by file. With each additional file in a
FrontPage Web, the process of applying permissions to a Web takes more
time. The more users and groups that are included in the permissions
list, the more time it takes to apply permissions.
If permissions do not change frequently for a given Web, you
should grant this privilege only to server administrators who can
perform the permissions updates during non-peak hours or when truly
necessary. Or, you can grant Authoring privileges to users to allow
them to change content but not modify permissions.
If the list of users for a given Web changes frequently, you can
achieve significant performance improvements by managing access to
Webs through NT groups rather than through individual user account
permissions. For example, you can establish a Windows NT group for
browsers, one for authors, and another one for administrators of the
Web. When you need to change Web permissions, modify the membership of
the appropriate group in the Windows NT User Manager instead of
updating the NTFS permissions for each file in the Web through the
FrontPage Server Extensions.
Installing Extensions
When you install server extensions you also create virtual roots and
grant file permissions, causing a delay in both of these activities.
You can improve performance during installation by decreasing the
amount of data in the content area of the server where
you are installing the server extensions. However, those performance
gains are mitigated when you bring the intended content back into the
Web again. You can also enhance performance by installing the server
extensions during non-peak hours when server demand is decreased.
Busy Web Server
If the Web server is heavily used, the FrontPage Server Extensions may
not be able to successfully complete a resource intensive operation
like publishing a Web. Note, however, that there are many other
reasons why publishing may not complete successfully, such as
unreliable modem connections to the Internet.
To work around this problem, establish a schedule where you publish
your Webs during non-peak hours when the server is not managing
resource intensive operations. As a further precaution, you may be
able to use staging servers to alleviate heavy loads on the production
server used for FrontPage authoring.