FP98: How to Change FrontPage Personal Web Server ServerName

MORE INFORMATION

ServerName affects the name the server returns to a client. For example, if a Web browser requests the following
http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage
the server redirects the request to this
http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/ (with a trailing slash)

This way, relative links are interpreted correctly. The server does not know the name that was sent in the original request (without the trailing slash), so it typically uses the host name as returned by the Transport Control Protocol (TCP).

This can lead to problems in three cases:

• Your computer is known by multiple names and you want to control which name is returned. (for example, mail.example.com and www.example.com)
• Your TCP is configured incorrectly so the server cannot determine its server name.
  
  The recommended solution for this case is to fix your TCP/IP configuration. As an interim workaround, you might change the ServerName, but this is not preferred and will lead to problems on a networked computer.
• You are using the FrontPage 1.0 Personal Web Server (PWS), and your hostname is not qualified (does not contain any dots). The original PWS rejects nonqualified domain names because they are misinterpreted if they were sent outside the local domain.

To change the ServerName for the FrontPage, follow these steps.

Personal Web Server

1. Using a text editor, such as Notepad, open the Httpd.cnf file. This file is located in the c:\FrontPage Webs\Server\conf subdirectory.
2. Locate the section which describes the ServerName directive. It looks similar to this:

         # ServerName allows you to set a host name that is sent back to
         # clients for your server. If it's different than the one the
         # program would get (i.e. use "www" instead of the host's real
         # name). Make sure your DNS is set up to alias the name to your
         # system!
         #
         # Format: ServerName <domain_name>
         #
         # no default
   						

3. Add the following line:

         ServerName <domain_name>
   						

   where <domain_name> is the name of your domain.
   
   NOTE: The server name cannot contain spaces.
   
   If you are naming your server localhost, type this line so that it looks similar to this:

   ServerName localhost

4. Save and close the file.

Restart the FrontPage Personal Web Server. It will respond to the name you typed in step 3.

NOTE: If your computer does not have DNS enabled and your TCP/IP stack supports it, you can use "localhost" (without the quotation marks) as your computer name without having to make the changes described in this article. You can also specify "localhost" if your computer has a host name that is not fully qualified. To determine if your TCP/IP stack, start the FrontPage Explorer, click About Microsoft FrontPage Explorer on the Help menu, and then click Network Test.