FP2000: Cannot Open or Create a New Web Site with Visual InterDev 6 (265057)

SYMPTOMS

When you use Microsoft Visual InterDev 6 to open or create a new Web site, you get the following error message:

Server name cannot contain any protocol information, please specify only server name.

When you specify the server name, and choose to use Secure Socket Layer, you get a new error message:

Unable to contact Web Server https://<Site Name>

This behavior occurs in the following situation:

You use Microsoft Visual InterDev 6 to open or create a new Web site.
You use the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol and Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0.
You type the Web site name as https://<Site Name>, where <Site Name> is the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the Web site.

CAUSE

Visual InterDev 6 uses Microsoft FrontPage 98 architecture to communicate with Internet Information Server 4.0. Therefore, Visual InterDev 6 supports only AT&T, VeriSign, and RSA certificates, and does not support the Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 version of Wininet.dll, which incorporates an additional layer of communication.

FrontPage 2000 uses the new Internet Explorer 5 and later architecture to communicate with Internet Information Server 4.0 SSL-enabled sites. The new version of Wininet.dll allows all SSL certificates that are supported in the Internet Explorer 5 browser to be supported in FrontPage 2000.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, follow these steps:

Create a new certificate request on the IIS 4.0 or 5.0 server.
When the certificate request has been created, submit the request to VeriSign, and make sure IBM is selected as the server type. Do not select Microsoft as the server type. (Contact VeriSign for help obtaining this certificate).

NOTE:You may need to specify a 40-bit certificate with the certificate authorities, because a 128-bit certificate may be generated by default.
Ensure that the previous certificate has been removed from the Key Manager. Make sure to click Commit All Changes.
When you have received the new certificate from VeriSign, install the certificate to the appropriate Web site.
Test HTTPS access through a browser, and then from FrontPage 98 or Visual InterDev.

This resolution should provide access to the Web site from FrontPage 98 and Visual InterDev through HTTPS.

WORKAROUND

To work around this behavior, use one of the following solutions:

Author your Web site locally by using Visual Interdev 6. Open the Web site with FrontPage 2000. Use FrontPage 2000 to publish to the Internet Information Server 4.0 Web site by using SSL.
Do not develop your Web against your live Web site. Instead, develop your Web against an internal Web site, and then copy the changes to the public Web site. The Visual InterDev Copy and Deploy options do not work. Microsoft has not verified whether Site Server replication works.
Modify your Web site so that it no longer requires that all connections are made be through SSL, and then design the Web site so that users use SSL but developers do not.
On the server that houses the public Web site, use the Internet Services Manager to create a new Web site that has the same Web root as the public Web site. This second Web site does not require SSL. To secure this second site, set its port to something obscure and, if possible, restrict access to specific IP addresses.
For FrontPage, upgrade FrontPage 98 clients to FrontPage 2000. This does not fix the problem in Visual InterDev because Visual InterDev still uses the FrontPage 98 architecture even when FrontPage 2000 is installed.

For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

267999 FIX: FrontPage 98 Clients and Visual InterDev Cannot Open Web Site Through SSL