Rewites and FrontPage

Following on from the excellent advice given me about the use of rewites
(see 'Redirection for deleted pages') I am still left with one problem.

I currently use MS FrontPage, and for legacy reasons will need to continue
to do so for some while until the migration of my site from static HTML to a
database-driven architecture is complete.

Unfortunaely, having updated .htaccess to use rewites, FrontPage will no
longer open my remote site for publishing.

Searching the Web and news groups this seems to be a recognised problem.

I have tried the following 'solutions', without success:

- Adding 'Options +FollowSymLinks' or 'Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch' to
..htaccess (I must be honest, I don't really understand what this is meant to
do'

- Adding 'RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !.*FrontPage.* [NC}' before the
other RewriteCond expressions in .htaccess

Perhaps there is a solution out there, but I've not been able to find it.

Does anyone know if there is one?

Many thanks.

Best Regards, Phil Steer

Re: Rewites and FrontPage

On Jun 28, 8:19 am, "Phil Steer" wrote:
> Following on from the excellent advice given me about the use of rewites
> (see 'Redirection for deleted pages') I am still left with one problem.
>
> I currently use MS FrontPage, and for legacy reasons will need to continue
> to do so for some while until the migration of my site from static HTML to a
> database-driven architecture is complete.
>
> Unfortunaely, having updated .htaccess to use rewites, FrontPage will no
> longer open my remote site for publishing.
>
> Searching the Web and news groups this seems to be a recognised problem.
>
> I have tried the following 'solutions', without success:
>
> - Adding 'Options +FollowSymLinks' or 'Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch' to
> .htaccess (I must be honest, I don't really understand what this is meant to
> do'
>
> - Adding 'RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !.*FrontPage.* [NC}' before the
> other RewriteCond expressions in .htaccess
>
> Perhaps there is a solution out there, but I've not been able to find it.
>
> Does anyone know if there is one?
>
> Many thanks.
>
> Best Regards, Phil Steer

all i can suggest is to simplify this condition:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !frontpage [NC]

however you can test it by simulating a request from Front page using
firefox,
get user agent switcher for firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/59
install and after finding your front page user agent string - make a
request to your localhost and look at the logs.
put it inside the user agent switcher and select it as the one ff will
use, test that it is running by checking the UA string from ff in your
localhost logs, then
see whether adjusting your rules makes a difference to what firefox
sees.

you could test this by having a helloworld.htm test url which exists
and would be served containing the word "HELLO!", BUT which your
index.php is set up to watch for and serve "GOODBYE!!" then request it
with firefox, then with ua set as frontpage, then with frontpage
itself. Just see what happens


if you are still not getting anywhere, download and install
fiddlertool:
http://www.fiddlertool.com/
this is a proxy that will show you whats going on when requests are
made from your machine.
so make a few requests with Frontpage and inpsect each row
infiddlertool and check the right hand side, in raw mode in the lower
window, see the status codes and other errors. Firefox must be set up
to use proxy 127.0.0.1 8888 for fiddlertool, its easier if you have
foxyproxy installed:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/2464
so you can switch between proxies (and no proxy) with a click