This directory can contain an author.log file in it that keeps track of publishes to the root web. I have never seen this file used or anything logged to it when interacting with the client. So don't worry if you don't see anything logged to it either.

This directory contains all the configuration and authentication information for the root web. The service.pwd and service.grp files are basically normal Apache password and group flat authentication files (usually these are named .htpasswd and .htgroup). If you want to change the password for a user or add or delete a user, you can modify these files and use the htpasswd program to change the encrypted passwords in service.pwd. The service.lck file is used as a lock on all operations while a FrontPage client is accessing the extensions. This keeps two clients from modifying the web simultaneously.

Other access control files include the access.cnf file, which contains a list of settings for the Realm Name and password directory. You can also use the svcacl.cnf file to control what IP addresses have access to the extended web.

The other files in this directory rarely will need to be changed or cared about. They are just files that keep track of the extended web and control what the FrontPage client is doing.

This is the description of this directory on Microsoft's website: "This folder contains text indexes for the WAIS search engine only. It is not used by Index Server on IIS." Well that's no help. So what does it do?

When the client first connects to the server that it is publishing to, it looks for these files at the base URL of the server to determine some global settings for the root web. As an example, If you were publishing to a sub web at http://www.yourdomain.com/~username/, then it would look for these files at http://www.yourdomain.com/_vti_inf.html or http://www.yourdomain.com/postinfo.html.

These files contain some information about where the extension binary programs are and what URL should be used for references.