web guru's, I need your help

[AFK]

I am in the process of organizing my companies website. There are a lot of unnecesary files up there, and I am in the process of getting rid of them. One thing I have noticed is that each folder has a folder inside it called "_vti_cnf". This folder is an exact replica of the folder it is housed in. What is the purpose of these folders? I downloaded the entire site and did a local test by deleting every "_vti_cnf" folder and the page still worked fine. Can you think of any reason for these folders being there?

 

[DIRTsquirt]

cant help much just letting you know you arent alone... those files I believe a frontpage files.
Oh and frontpage = suck
And my guestimation as to how it got there is someone ftp'd the entire site. Those are frontpage extension (I am guessing) which are already on your site put there by your provider.
Loose em just wasted space.
I wouldnt act on my suggestions until you get confirmation. Is this folder in the cgi bin?

 

[Workin']

You get those folders when you create a website using MS FrontPage. It uses them to keep track of changes when you update the site and who knows what else. edit: You can delete them if you are not going to maintain the page using FrontPage.

Oh, and FrontPage is not suck. It works just fine for lots of people - web snobs only say it sucks because any moron can use FP and get the same results in 1/2 hour as the snob can in 1/2 day using "notepad", LOL. But FP does add 3 lines of HTML you don't need to each page (snobs call this "bloat" - like 3 lines out of hundreds is a big deal) and it does add the _vti_cnf folders on the host - again, hardly a crisis. FP just makes web site creation accessible to the unwashed masses, and that hurts the geeks' egos.

 

[DIRTsquirt]

I agree that people that say they use notepad exclusively. are a bit pretensious or in the least foolish with their tiime. A good wysiwyg editor is a massive time savor. I dont like the mini server side includes fp uses. It has alot of handy stuff and I have been known to make image maps in fp due to the ease of it.
but frontpage turns into a disaster when you wanna run it with cgi. not sayin it cant be done just saying it is a pain in the ass.
I prefer a wysiwyg editor that uses html and java scripts only. I wanna manage the serverside includes myself.
The front page publish option is a pretty good tool makes it so simple.. not any harder than a ftp client to use.
My moto is when in rome do as the romans do.. fp use publish dream weaver use their manager. note pad use ftp.
The bottom line is if you removed the folder and all works well. and indeed it is a duplicate file for file. it was prolly ftp'd there and is taking up space. if space is an issue I would loose it