Sincerely,
Scott Vanderlip - President - Internet Software Sciences

Newsletter Index:

• Tips for customing the Web+Center application. Please review the article below for some helpful hints on how to quickly and efficiently customize the Web+Center application for your specific requirements.

Web+Center ASP web-scripting design architecture
The ASP modules (*.asp) and related include files (*.inc) are the individual files that are called by the application links and submit buttons. These files are plain ASCII "text files" and should only be opened and edited by "plain text editors" that do not automatically add or embed additional code into the file automatically. The text editor we recommend for editing the files is called "TextPad" and it is available for free from www.textpad.com. The Notepad text editor that comes with Microsoft Accessories works for editing the files but lacks the ability to display line number which is extremely important when developing and debugging customations as we shall show you shortly.

5 Basic tips for debugging and customizing the Web+Center application.

• ASP error message pages - In the Internet Explorer Browser, Microsoft has attempted to make life easier for users by not displaying the full HTTP 500 error messages to the IE browser but instead displaying a "friendly error message". This browser option should be disabled (Show Friendly HTTP error messages). To confirm this setting if you are using IE, click on Tools.. Internet Options.. Advanced Tab, Scroll down to Browsing and uncheck the "Show friendly HTTP error messages". With this feature disabled, anytime the ASP engine detects an error, your browser will display a full ASP error with module name, line number, error type and even column within that line if possible.
• Debugging the error message from the error message page - Once you start making modifications to the source code, and you try and save those changes and run it, it will soon report an ASP error. Luckily it tells you exactly the module name, line number, and error type so it is usually fairly easy to debug your problem and continue your development.
  To debug it, simply open up the ASP or INC file module with an ASCII text editor that the error message specified and then go to the line number of that file to find the exact line of code that the application. From the error type you can usually get a quick handle on why the application is reporting an error at that line.
• Finding the particular module to customize - To customize a particular part of the Web+Center application, you need to know the name of the module that is being called so you can edit the ASP or INC module. For many buttons and links, simply hover the mouse over the link and you can decipher the name of the linked ASP module. For modules that are form/submit type modules, typically they are named DoXXXXX.asp where the original module name was XXXXX. Otherwise, if you view the HTML source of the original calling module and look for the FORM Action= tag you should be able to determine the ASP module that gets called from the form submission.
• Recovering an original version of an ASP module. In the event that you have broken an ASP file and can't figure out why it is failing and you want to start back with the originally released ASP before any customization, simply go to the Documentation page (docs50) and then click on the links below the Web+Center Version Server section. Each of those links will take you to an HTML page that displays links for the most currently released production versions of those files. If you are grabbing any files from the Tech+Center, Pocket+Center, Business+Center or Customer+Center directories, it may be necessary to grab any corresponding new or updated files from the language directory. Since page labels and graphics are commonly referenced from the language directory, it is important to check if any new files have been placed in the language directory if you are doing updates.
• File Security Permissions - The most common error message we get support calls on usually occurs during the initial installation reason we get support message that we get support calls on usually occurs during the initial installation phase of the Web+Center Help Desk and it centers around the necessary file security permissions for the Web+Center folder. To run the Web+Center application for annonymous users (without authentication) requires that you set the file security perphase of the Web+Center Help Desk and it centers around the necessary file security permissionsmissions for the entire Web+Center folder and all sub folders to the user Everybody with full control. The file security permissions are set using Windows Explorer and not IIS. You should remove all other user permissions and be sure to "break" security permission inheritance from directory permissions above the Internet Software Sciences/ Web+Center 5.0 folder. Since the application typically installs in the Program Files directory, it will attempt apply some inherited permissions that come with the Program Files directory tree. If you reset any file security permissions, besure to completely reboot the computer to properly reset the permissions in all of the system's ACL (Access Control Lists).

To show how the ASP debugging environment works, we will modify a simple test.asp file which is located in the Techcenter directory and then force an error and then view the results. See the steps below for information and screen shots.

Step 1: We first open and edit the test.asp file using our TextPad editor. To force an ASP error, we are going to modify one of the ASP code lines by adding a incorrect second parenthesis at line number 19 by taking the line:

if request.form("submit") <> "" then

if request.form(("submit") <> "" then

Figure #1 - ASP module edit with TextPad text editor

Figure #2 - Full ASP error with module name, line number and error type