Fire Site 2.1 Release Notes

This document briefly describes the changes from FireSite 2.0 to FireSite 2.1. As of July 7th, 1997, FireSite 2.1 is the official released & supported version of - FireSite Virtual Domain Manager (virtual domain service) - FireSite Speed Booster Edition (site acceleration) - FireSite Standard Edition (VDM plus acceleration) - FireSite Multimedia Edition (VDM, unlimited acceleration, multimedia features) NOTE: StarNine has identifed a critical "crash bug" in WebSTAR 2.0 and earlier versions. You should upgrade to WebSTAR 2.1 as soon as you can. http://www.starnine.com/ New features in FireSite 2.1 ---------------------------- * Added resettable statistics for traffic analysis and virtual-domain billing Statistics are visible in /perf.fire, the 'list of sites' page, and on the setup page for each virtual site. * Added "FS Live" Finder label. This is designed explicitly for "live" files such as WebCams. FireSite will not cache any "FS Live" files, and if an "FS Live" file changes, FireSite will not bother to clear the WebSTAR or plug-in caches. (MM only) * FireSite now starts up very, very quickly compared to earlier versions. The startup time is NOT related to the size of your FireSite database (anymore). For the first couple of minutes AFTER startup, your server will continue caching the FireSite database into RAM, which may slow down your server a small amount. You will see a message in the WebSTAR window when the database is fully cached. FireSite will automatically convert your existing database into the "fast start" format the first time you run FireSite 2.1 (this one-time operation may take a few minutes). * Added control over whether FireSite "cleans" messy URLs with redundant information or not. For example, if a Netscape users enters http://www.firstco.com/~firstco/products.html FireSite ordinarily redirects the browser (using link.fire) to http://www.firstco.com/products.html However, if you are combining FireSite with an IP-mapping router or driver, you may wish to disable this feature. You can now control it by accessing the "FireSite Setup" page. (Std and MM only) * Added special control for ISDN users with "virtual connections" (also known as dial-on-demand, and dialback-on-demand) This control allows you to stop FireSite from monitoring your remote servers after a certain period of inactivity on your Web site. FireSite will stop testing the remote servers after the timeout you specify, and your ISDN line will be able to 'drop.' FireSite will resume remote-server monitoring once activity resumes on your Web site. * New messages in the WebSTAR window that show when various FireSite feature have been triggered: Virtual-domain related (Std and MM only): + FireSite serving Site Error page ([requested-URL] not found) + FireSite serving Multisite Index Page to "[name-of-browser]" [requested URL] + FireSite linking browser to cleaner virtua…