ideal development and hosting setup for Frontier 9?

[Joshua Lipton/Slowtrain]

Hello everyone.

I'm running Frontier 9 on my local Windows XP pro machine while I develop
several manila sites. I ultimately want to host these manila sites on a
external Frontier server. In addition to customizing all of the templates
for these Manila sites, I have several custom macros that I am using to
render the design of the sites. This required me to make legal those macros
within the Frontier server as well.

So here is the question:
Is there a way to mirror a Frontier server? Perhaps it's as simple as
copying the entire Frontier directory from my machine over to the server. I
wouldn't know. The external Frontier server will be entirely under my
control, so I want to create a fairly basic development environment. I.E. My
local dev box runs a server that I test and build stuff on... my external
server hosts the production versions of this stuff. What are your ideas on a
solution for this?

An additional related question. What is the best OS to run the external
server under. I want to be able to remote admin the server too, not just
through the web... I need access to Frontier itself. What is your
recommended remote admin package? Any and all possibilities are open to me.

I'd be particularly interested in hearing from any Frontier developers who
have been doing work for outside clients. What solutions have you come up
with for handling development/hosting of manila sites?

Thanks,
Joshua Lipton