Throughout these directories you will notice that there are .htaccess files that have all the authentication directives setup except for a require user or require group directive. The exception to this is the _vti_adm and _vti_aut directories under the _vti_bin directory where by default there are require group directives.

This directory will hold files that are not meant to be viewed from a web browser.

_vti_bin/
| _vti_adm/
` _vti_aut/

This is the primary extensions directory. The stub executable files go in this directory and in the _vti_aut and _vti_adm directories within it. The fpcount.exe and shtml.exe executables are programs that are run like CGIs when someone visits the FrontPage enabled website. The fpcount.exe program is used for FrontPage web counters. The shtml.exe handles all other browser based FrontPage extension requests.

The _vti_aut directory contains the author.exe program, which is what the FrontPage client interacts with when it publishes a website, calculates hyperlinks and so on. This directory is password protected with a .htaccess file that requires a user from the htaccess group authors to authenticate.

The _vti_adm directory contains the admin.exe program, which is used when the client needs to create a sub web of the current web or to add/remove user privileges from the web. This directory is also password protected and requires a user in the administrators group to authenticate.

The root web and all of the sub webs and subdirectories of any web that you access with the FrontPage client will have one of these directories. Inside of it is configuration information for each file in the directory that the _vti_cnf directories resides in. So if you have a few files called index.html, pictures.html and links.html in your www/ directory, then inside the _vti_cnf directory in the www/ directory would be files called index.html, pictures.html and links.html. Those files contain configuration and attribute information such as what version of the file it is, when it was last modified, what character set it uses and so on.