you are putting it there (intentionally or otherwise)?

Um, no - I'm not putting the _vti_cnf there, nor the Config.pm which is in the _vti_cnf dir. Both are created by FP. I'm sort of scoobied why Perl would search in this directory at all, as it's clearly not in @INC.

you believe the presence of config.pm to be an "automatic" feature of FP? or

The creation of the Config.pm file in the _vti_cnf directory is something FP does, when it does it's thing.

the source for what FP pretends is .html may include some sort of reference to config.pm?

No. FP isn't reading the (original) Config.pm file as if it was some native module, it's just creating metadata about the Config.pm file, and saving it in a directory called, _vti_cnf in a file called, Config.pm. It's braindead, I know.

Based solely on the limited info you've provided, I suspect the problem lies in your selection of and linking (eg, coding) to <dir> names,

Limited? I gave a background, what I think is happening, a bare-bones example script, and then asked for help on some points - since I'm stuck. I think a better word would be concise, or, to the point.

but I'm so rabidly anti-FP that YMMV.

Well, if you don't know FrontPage, why are you commenting at all? I don't really have any stance on FrontPage - it's a program, I don't use it, but it is installed on hosting accounts. I make programs that theoretically should run on these hosting accounts, but I'm having problems with this one issue.