Change Site ID in IIS 6

We have an application that is dependant on a web site's Site ID in IIS. Usually, when we need to move a site from one server to the next, we just change the Site ID while using the handy IIS Migration Tool. However, we just had a site that was set up without the Site ID properly set so our database records were out of sync. A little bit of googling and presto:

1. Open a command line (make sure you're an Admin or run the script as an Admin).
2. Navigate to your AdminScripts directory (typically c:\Inetpub\AdminScripts).
3. And run this script: cscript adsutil.vbs move w3svc/118431234 w3svc/11165089073 (where the first is the old Site ID and the second is the new one)

I'm displaying my ignorance I'm sure by posting this here as something I didn't know already, but heh, it's a useful thing to make note of (you didn't think I'd go do a search and replace in the IIS Metabase file did you?).

Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Strikes Again

Yet another interesting quirk in the annals of Visual Studio 2005 SP1 issues: I've been wondering why periodically, attempting to build a Windows application solution in Visual Studio 2003 (which includes a setup project), my machine would inexplicably decide to start a (seemingly) endless installation process that I would need to cancel and then proceed to kill all spawned msiexec processes running. I had done some quick googles to find out a solution before but hadn't come up with anything so I left it - I would soon be moving on to my new developer machine and would probably repave my old machine. However, as I'm taking awhile to fully transition to my new machine running Vista (which I love, and sometimes despise), I'm still doing VS2003 builds on the old machine and was getting tired of the whole process which kills about 15 minutes of productivity everytime I need a final MSI installer to deploy. I let the build run while taking a break and saw the ensuing error message: Error 1706.An installation package for the product Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Pro - ENU cannot be found. Try the installation again using a valid copy of the installation package 'vs_setup.msi'. What the?!? We're not doing anything with Visual Studio 2005 here, only Visual Studio 2003! Thank goodness for Alex Thissen's post at really long link here. Turns out that SP1 not only messes with itself, but can also start playing havoc with VS2003 builds as well. The Visual Studio 2005 installer cache was confused, so whenever I did an MSI build, it was attempting to find and then install Visual Studio 2005. Cool! That's just what I want to do every time I do a totally unrelated task ;-) Did I mention that this all started to happen way back when following a finally successful Visual Studio 2005 SP1 upgrade? Fortunately the fix is relatively easy (took about 10 minutes for it to churn through the following): open a command prompt and, depending on what version of VS2005 you're running, run the following command: msiexec /fvomus {437AB8E0-FB69-4222-B280-A64F3DE22591} /l*v vs8_repair.log If you're like me, you attempted it while there were still some half-finished installers going on in the background from the previous half-finished MSI builds that you hadn't totally killed yet (thus thud! You can't proceed), so it's easiest to just reboot before doing the above. You can find the proper GUID to put in the above by viewing your machine application log and view the event prior to the error.

Textbase help won't launch on Vista

Whether you are using Inmagic CS/TextWorks (v.9 or less) or Inmagic DB/TextWorks (v.10 or less) on Vista, you will see something like the following error message when you try to use Help.

Why is that? Well, it's a long story* but the gist of it is, the help file was created in a format that is not, by default, supported by Windows Vista.

Fortunately, you *can* go and download the software which will let Vista use these older-style help files. (Anything that has the *.hlp filename extension.)

Get WinHlp32.exe for Windows Vista: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=82148.

* Okay, fine, here's the long story (taken verbatim from Microsoft site): "Windows Help (WinHlp32.exe) is a Help program that has been included with Microsoft Windows versions starting with the Microsoft Windows 3.1 operating system. However, the Windows Help program has not had a major update for many releases and no longer meets Microsoft's standards. Therefore, starting with the release of Windows Vista, the Windows Help program will not ship as a feature of Windows."

How Microsoft can get away with the cussed irony of condemning their own software for not meeting their standards is beyond me.

Inmagic WebPublisher web data entry on Vista (IIS 7)

Inmagic WebPublisher PRO depends on classic ASP for its out-of-the-box web data entry. Vista does not, by default, enable ASP. You must enable it through the Control Panel:

Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows Features on or off > Internet Information Services > World Wide Web Services > ASP - Check!

Once you've done this, the IIS Manager will add ASP as an allowed ISAPI and CGI Restriction at the machine level, and add a new feature called ASP at the machine level. (See image below.)

 

Of course, this does not absolve you of the necessity to set up the right permissions for WebPublisher to update the textbase via the web, but at least you can follow WebPublisher's setup instructions knowing your IIS 7 webserver is ready to handle ASP.

New DB/Text from Content Server Structure Backup

You probably already know you can export the structure of a textbase as a "backup textbase file," which can be used to create a whole new textbase with the same structure. You say "new textbase" and then "restore from an existing textbase stucture backup file." Less work. Mobility. Etc. The backup file has got a .tbb extension if DB/Text, and .cbb if CS/Text (Content Server).

So what if you want to backup a CS/Text textbase structure, but then base a new DB/Text textbase on it? Or the other way round? Ah. Snag. Problem. Obstacle. DB/Text don't allow you to browse for .cbb, and CS/Text don't recognize .tbb. Ai, what to do?

Rename the extension. Rename filename.cbb to filename.tbb. Or the reverse. Whatever you need. It works because they're really the same thing.

Run .NET 1.1 applications on Vista (IIS 7)

1. Install .NET 1.1 and all service packs if not on the OS already.
2. Open the IIS Manager and navigate to the server root. (Not a website root, above that - the machine name.) 
3. Double-click "ISAPI and CGI restrictions."
4. Add the v1.1 aspnet_isapi.dll to "Allowed" restrictions (it'll be at %Windows%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_isapi.dll)
5. Navigate to the website root in IIS manager and double-click "ISAPI Filters."
6. Add the ASP.NET 1.1 ISAPI filter from %Windows%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_filter.dll
7. Go to the website root again in IIS manager and look at "Advanced Settings."
8. Ensure the website is using an ASP.NET 1.1 Application Pool (Vista created one for me when I installed .NET 1.1 - you may need to create one yourself.)
9. Done.

del.icio.us Firefox bookmarks

I've been using the del.icio.us extension for Firefox for a few months now. My demands for an online bookmark system were simple: it had to be available from anywhere, even if I'm at someone else's machine (easy), and it also had to integrate seamlessly with the existing browser bookmark interface (erk, not so easy).

Well, heck, the del.icio.us extension does both admirably. I can continue to use the bookmark treeview I'm used to, or use a search-as-you-type approach, or browse by tag. To tell you the truth, I'm hooked on the search-as-you-type so completely now I almost never browse my bookmarks by folder. I have a *lot* of bookmarks now anyway, and trying to organize or navigate them by digging down through nested folders is a fool's errand.

Adding a new bookmark is also very quick indeed. I don't have to choose a folder it belongs in, all I have to do is label it with some tags. Tags are recommended to me from popular tags other people have used on the same page, plus tags I've used before. I'm also given complete-as-you-type suggestions with the number of times I've used the tag before. Brilliant.

del.icio.us Bookmarks Firefox add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3615

quick tour: http://del.icio.us/help/firefox/bookmarks/quicktour