[Zope] <base> instead of SiteAccess

[George Osvald]

I am using ProxyPass configuration with Apache and SiteAccess. My web-site
is located on ISP's server in my user directory. Because I can't stay on
line for too long during a day(I have a phone on the same line) I tend to do
all editing off line and then at night upload the lot. The subdirectory of
my web site is 'okstudio'. Because I am using SiteAccess(with 'base' in the
folder 'okstudio'), none of the relative links worked on my local machine. I
like my links nice and short that do not include '/okstudio/'. It looks too
long in the address window of my browser. Before each upload to the server I
had to change the links.  I was trying to use SiteAccess on my home machine
but could not get it working. It would not work for http://localhost or
http://localhost:8080 ......and so and so. I tried several times without a
success. Then I decided to use a different approach. I created a property
'base' in the root folder of my site. The string is: <base
href="http://localhost:8080/okstudio/">. Then I put <dtml-var base> in my
standard_html_header and all the alternative headers I use (JavaScript and
stuff). All I have to do now is change the 'base' property to <base
href="http://www.myserver.com.au/"> before each upload and all the links can
stay the same. I would not even have to use SiteAccess at all if I had a
little redirection method in my root directory. It is all OK but I would
like to know if there is a way how to make SiteAccess working on the local
machine so I can have almost identical setup locally. Can you help anyone?

I am also serving local files located in my original public_html directory
from ZOPE going directly to my user directory. The links look like this:
http://123.45.678.9/~username . Would that be considered a security risk
exposing my user directory like that?
George Osvald