Wilson WebPortal Forums : Initial Setup

How do you delete a part from a page?

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 00:23:16 GMT

I would expect if you deleted a part all content would be deleted as well.

HelloWorld module in a seperate project.

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 01:56:18 GMT

I actually have my modules already split across several projects: Modules, Admin, and Extras. So simply make yours look like any one of these, as there isn't anything special about any of these. Or another possiblility if you don't need more is to simply create a user control and nothing more. Many of mine do have user controls so you can easily modify the look and feel, while the logic is in a project, but some are pure user controls and nothing else. Take a look at the various user modules: UserPrefs, UserPassword, UserLogin, and UserEmail.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

HelloWorld module in a seperate project.

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 01:49:53 GMT

Hi Paul

Any suggestions how to setup a HelloWorld Module in a seperate project not part of your

source project so that in the future i could continue to use your codebase without any modifications to mine.

Thanks.

Aliases

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 01:49:07 GMT

Hi Frans:

Ah, I believe you are correct. I always set things up the second way, probably mostly because I don't have a lot of control over it when using shared hosts.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Aliases

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 01:47:35 GMT

Paul,

I have the same problem. Can you comment on the following, what is the correct setup?

a. 2 different domains pointing to the same IIS website, configured these domains as hostheaders on this website

b. 2 separate websites in IIS, pointing to the same root folder containing the portal files. Each website contains the corresponing hostheaders.

I think option a gives the problems as mentioned below as the portal is only initialized during application startup. In other words; the alias (hostheader) is not checked each request to determine the matching portal. This could be added to the code obviously but asking you; will it break your current caching mechanism?

Thanks in advance,

Frans

Beginner questions.

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 10:37:14 GMT

1.   Yes. The use of the ORMapper means you can use almost any database. I'm currently using SQL 2000 on my webhost and SQL 2005 on my dev machine so either of these are trivial, while others would require creating the matching schema but once that's done they will work too.

2.   A module is reusable control, often a user control, that is registered in the portal and can thus be dynamically added to any page. A part on the other hand is simply one instance of a module on a specific page -- kind of like an object is an instance of a class. A webpart is a special type of control that ASP.NET gives you as a building block for its "portal" framework -- originally a SharePoint thing but not necessarily so anymore. Note that webparts are not used in my portal.

3.   The database will only set itself up the first time, so if you have it working in VS2005 then you'll need to use that first admin portal itself to configure additional portals.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Beginner questions.

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 02:24:12 GMT

1. Will WWPortal work with SQL server 2000.

2. What is the difference between PagePart and Module and WebPart.

3. I created a vir dir to WebRoot and when i browse to the page default.aspx from IIS i

get page not found message, but it works fine when i bring it up in VS2005 as a website.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks.

Aliases

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:03:04 GMT

Hi Magnus:

You certainly can set aliases to point to sub-domains, and even completely different domains -- that is something I use myself a lot. You need to make sure you have that domain or subdomain pointing to the portal's webroot folder, and you need to make sure it is configured for ASP.NET v2.0. I can't think of any other requirement or issue to be aware of, and I haven't seen this behavior myself so I'm at a loss to explain it.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Aliases

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:57:29 GMT

Hi.

Does the aliases have to point to a subfolder on the same domain? Becasue I'm trying to set it up with subdomains but can't get it to work.

Example:
mydomain.com            Main Portal
admin.mydomain.com  Admin Portal
port1.mydomain.com   Portal 1
port2.mydomain.com   Portal 2

All added on the same single IIS web site.

If I do an iisreset and then surf to portal 1 I will end up on portal 1 as it should. But if I after that type any other subdomain it will still end up on portal 1. It is cached somehow. To be able to reach the admin portal again, I have to iisreset and make sure that the first domain I visit to is admin.mydomain.com.

Regards,
Magnus

Initial setup - Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 23:45:01 GMT

I do need to do a better job with some error messages, like the database wasn't setup, in my next build. Maybe I can even come up with a few others and/or more details. Some things are going to always be hard to diagnose at runtime though, but I'll try to get it better.

So far though the problems that get resolved seem to be of two types. First, it has to be setup correctly in IIS, which means marked as an IIS app and pointing to the right folder. If this is not setup correctly then there's nothing I can do, since the portal code will never even be configured to try to run correctly. The other main problem scenario is the database connection string, and that is something that I should be able to provide at least a little better message.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Initial setup - Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 23:34:48 GMT

Hi Paul,

More information since the previous post in this thread...

If I execute iisreset before each time I run the portal from within Visual Studio, the real error shows up. Apparently I have a problem with my database setup, but I only ever saw that error one time, and thought I had fixed it, because during the next run through the error was different. This lead me to believe something else was wrong. Hence my confusion.

What I think is happening is that during the first run through the portal code runs Framework.Controller Initialize() the first time, hits the database error and raises it. All is as expected. The developer then attempts to fix the error. But the next time the portal runs, something is cached (or otherwise causing the code to think it's already been initialized) and it is trying to execute a code path that assumes there is data and goes and tries to load a theme and display the home page. This is where the confusion occurs, because it's acting as though there's data in the database, when there isn't any. At least that's the theory, anyway.

Sorry for the rambing post, but I hope this helps someone else out who might be having the same problem. Now to figure out why SQL Express is refusing to create a valid user login account... which is a really simple thing, theoretically, and I've done it many times before in 2000 and msde, so not a clue as to why I'm botching it up all of a sudden. Oh well.

Cheers,

Steve

Initial setup - Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 23:34:45 GMT

I am running the same configuration and am getting the same error as reported by Dean.

As I look at the call stack where the error is being thrown, the entry point is OnPreInit in PageBase.cs. I am baffled since I can't dig anywhere to see where the glitch may be. There's nothing else earlier in the call chain (as far as I can tell) for me to go look at. Also, I saw mentioned elsewhere that on first hit an entry is written to wp_Config table. I checked and there are no records there.

I must be an idiot, because it is not obvious to me how the portal code can be where it is looking for a theme to load without a single record in any of the tables. I ran the setup db script and it created everything fine, but loaded no data, and that's ok because there aren't any sql insert statements to do so. So the portal somehow knows it's not set up and "does something". I just can't get to where that "something" is in the code so I can't tell where it's failing. Or else I'd set up the records myself.

Can anyone shed a little light on how the portal goes about setting itself up? I've been at this for hours, and this framework is so very very promising and cool, but trying to get this to even run makes me feel like an idiot. (And I've been coding for over twelve years.)

Initial setup - web configuration

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 18:26:29 GMT

Hi Dean:

Are you running it inside of VS 2005? If so, did you run it the first time directly from your browser so that it setup everything correctly? And is that database and url the exact same that you're using in VS 2005? I don't have VS 2005 Standard, but I do know that I've heard that running web apps inside VS 2005 with Sql Express can reset your database everytime in some cases. In other words, I'm just guessing as there's obviously a setup problem, and I suspect its something to do with VS 2005, Sql Express, and/or your IIS Setup -- all the things that are really tough to debug without being there to see it for myself, so I'm not real sure what to tell you.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Initial setup -- web root config

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 18:26:12 GMT

Initial setup - Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 18:25:48 GMT

Initial setup -- web root config

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 04:39:05 GMT

Hi Paul,

As a followup, I am running VS2005 Standard. When I try to set IIS as the webserver (and create an IIS application on WebRoot) and then run the solution, I get an error in the controller class, at

internal static void Initialize() {
    HttpContext context = HttpContext.Current;
    string appPath = context.Request.ApplicationPath.TrimEnd('/');
    string aliasPath = context.Request.Url.Host + appPath;
    initialized = Core.Config.Initialize(aliasPath);

An exception of type 'System.TypeInitializationException' occurred in WilsonWebPortalFramework.DLL but was not handled in user code

Additional information: The type initializer for 'Wilson.WebPortal.Core.Config' threw an exception.

I guess the bottom line is, I am missing something basic on how to set this up using VS2005 Standard, SqlSqerver 2005 Express, and IIS. For info, this is my connection string:

with the database in the WebRoot\App_Data folder.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

--Thanks, Dean

Initial setup - web configuration

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 04:09:37 GMT

Hi Paul,

One more question...

I am using VS2005 and SqlExpress. I followed the steps in your readme file for setting things up and have partial success. while running the website in VS2005, I added a Basic: HtmlText part to the initial page and when I try to edit it I get:

Failed to map the path '/aspnet_client/FreeTextBox/Languages/en-US.xml'.

Stack Trace:

[InvalidOperationException: Failed to map the path '/aspnet_client/FreeTextBox/Languages/en-US.xml'.]
   System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment.MapPathActual(VirtualPath virtualPath, Boolean permitNull) +483
   System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment.MapPathInternal(VirtualPath virtualPath) +48
   System.Web.VirtualPath.MapPathInternal() +25
...

Did I miss a step?

On a related note, when you use VS2005, the WebRoot is a website "project". Have you tried converting it to an ASP.Net WEb Application (ala Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Projects ?

--Thanks, Dean

Initial setup - Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 04:02:12 GMT

Hi Paul,

I am using VS2005 and SqlExpress. I followed the steps in your readme file for setting things up and have partial success. When I run the website in VS2005, it starts fine and I can login in with AdminUser, etc. However, when I try to browse Default.aspx from IIS I get the following:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

private Core.Theme theme {
Line 47:    get { return this.Profile.Theme ?? this.page.Portal.Theme; }
Line 48:   }
Line 49:
Source File: C:\src_ext\wilson\WilsonWebPortal\v1.0.0.2\src\Framework\Bases\PageBase.cs    Line: 47

Stack Trace:

[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.]
   Wilson.WebPortal.Framework.PageBase.get_theme() in C:\src_ext\wilson\WilsonWebPortal\v1.0.0.2\src\Framework\Bases\PageBase.cs:47
   Wilson.WebPortal.Framework.PageBase.OnPreInit(EventArgs e) in C:\src_ext\wilson\WilsonWebPortal\v1.0.0.2\src\Framework\Bases\PageBase.cs:58
   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +521

I hope this is not covered elsewhere. I treid to read through the forum.

--Thanks, Dean

Mulitple portals and aliasing

Wed, 03 May 2006 15:40:07 GMT

Hi Paul,

Thanks for that. I had the aliases in. I've managed to get it up n' running. What I've done is simply copy the 'empty' DB and app to the webhost, and run it there. This did the install i.e. populated the DB with the necessities. The alias created was www.mysite.com/myportal. I'm now going to use that DB (Access by the way) to develop locally, making my content changes, etc, and upload later.

Thanks again for all you help.

Regards,

Sean

Mulitple portals and aliasing

Wed, 03 May 2006 15:06:53 GMT

Hi Sean:

You would need to set an alias for www.mysite.com/myportal, and probably mysite.com/myportal also -- and you need to make sure that the myportal folder is an IIS app, and that it is also setup for ASP.NET v2.0 since it could be configured differently.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Mulitple portals and aliasing

Wed, 03 May 2006 14:18:28 GMT

Paul,

I create my WebPortal locally, e.g. http://localhost/myportal and copy the app and DB to my web host http://www.mysite.com/myportal. I only get a blank page if I browse to http://www.mysite.com/myportal. myportal is set as an ASP.NET 2.0 IIS app.DB path is correct. I haven't got the host to point to this as my main app (this is not WH4L). I want to keep the URL http://mysite.com/myportal, as I'm only pitching the idea to the customer whose site is already running on this domain. I've tried a few different aliases, to no avail.

Any info greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Sean

Mulitple portals and aliasing

Wed, 03 May 2006 12:44:50 GMT

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the info, I'll put that into play now.

Regards,

Sean

Mulitple portals and aliasing

Wed, 03 May 2006 12:01:25 GMT

Hi Sean:

First, I'll tell you what I do -- and this is true regardless of whether its WebHost4Life or not, since I do the same thing with my clients that host their own sites -- and this is also a very common practice I've seen many times over the years from others too. Basically I don't put any site in my default IIS folder -- its convenient that first time, but if you plan on hosting multiple sites then you're asking for several types of trouble, not just the inconvenience you've seen so far. That requires a support person from WebHost4Life to point your first site to the subfolder that you create and specify, but then you will be able to handle the rest on your own -- although I still had to WebHost4Life to create a db user that had the proper db reader and writer roles. So I would suggest that you go ahead and do that now before you go any farther -- create your new subfolder and move the WebPortal stuff to it (or to be safe copy it first and delete the original in the root when everything else is done), and then have WebHost4Life to point your site to that folder. The alternative though is to have WebHost4Life manually point your sub-domains to the root -- it certainly is possible, but it will mean you may need them more than once if you go this route. As for sub-applications, WebHost4Life and many others have features in their control panels for you to mark folders as IIS apps, and for those that do not you will simply need them to do it manually -- if they can't do that then you don't want them hosting your stuff -- and that is true for regardless of whether you're using a portal approach or traditional approaches.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Mulitple portals and aliasing

Wed, 03 May 2006 10:32:49 GMT

Hi Paul,

I am hosting the WebPortal app as my 'main' application. That is, it's in the default IIS directory on my hosting server. I have multiple portals built (locally) and am copying them up to my hosting server. The problem arises when I want to refer to my portals via aliases. Both my hosting sites (one is the same as yours - WH4L) have subdomain facilities. I have an alias set up blah.mysite.com. My host requires that I point my subdomain to a subfolder. I can't point it to the root folder where the application located. Is there a way of redirecting, or something, from the subfolder?

Also, i have an alias www.mysite.com/subportal. My host doesn't allow me create this virtual directory pointing to my app root. Is there any way to put a default.aspx in my subportal folder to redirect to my portal app with relevant parameters.

(As an aside, I also have a URL forwarding (rather than a domain pointer) to my subportal directory e.g. www.completelydifferentdomain -> www.mysite.com/subportal. I have no alias for this (1st URL), as its not relevant here.

Thanks for the great products.

Regards,

Sean

What are UrlMaps?

Tue, 02 May 2006 00:41:46 GMT

There are at least two different possible use cases. First, you may have two or more page paths that you want to use for the same "page". A typical example is that you have a new structure for your pages but you still want your old links to work also. The other main scenario is to "hide" query strings, and although the main portal pages already avoid query strings, its also true that the actions on those pages do have query strings. An example on this site is all of the forum topics -- they are all mapped to the same forums page, but they each have different querystrings. So http://www.wilsonwebportal.com/Forums/Setup.aspx actually maps to http://www.wilsonwebportal.com/Forums/Default.aspx?part=75&action=topic&id=12&key=YG/XDDtv//ZMhS8WvkD1OQ==.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

What are UrlMaps?

Tue, 02 May 2006 00:36:24 GMT

Is there an example of one in use on this site? What does the setup look like for the example.

Thanks

Setting up a page

Tue, 02 May 2006 00:36:08 GMT

Exactly -- there is no need or requirement for a physical page since this is database driven. In other words, of course your paths will be "fake" in the sense that there won't actually be an underlying physical file at that path. This is what is typically called "url rewriting" and it makes your urls look better than the querystrings used by some popular portals. The one exception is that the root default.aspx page is required -- but it is does not have any content in it -- just don't delete it thinking its not needed.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Setting up a page

Mon, 01 May 2006 22:19:05 GMT

One of the requirements of a page is a "Page Path" like so "~/Default.aspx". If the portal is database driven what is the purpose of a phyical page. The paths need to be unique also so I've been making up fake paths.

How do you delete a part from a page?

Mon, 01 May 2006 22:11:41 GMT

That makes sense. How about a setting when you add/edit the module (which becomes a part). Each module would have a different delete process I'd guess.

Thanks for the reply

How do you delete a part from a page?

Mon, 01 May 2006 20:25:45 GMT

There isn't a quick way to delete a part right now -- although as you know you can make it inactive. Why? Because a part might have content associated with it, and I need to decide how to best handle that situation -- delete content too, not allow part with content to be deleted, or something else? Note that most parts will have content, so I need to be very careful on this, but I would appreciate any input you have about what you would expect and/or what other portals do.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

How do you delete a part from a page?

Mon, 01 May 2006 19:33:34 GMT

I added a part to a page, now how do I remove it? The part does get supressed by the active switch.

Getting started with a sample site

Mon, 01 May 2006 15:03:35 GMT

Hi Tom:

I do need to give more instructions -- so far I've been assuming that most people would be familiar with the similar process used by other portals, which is a big assumption that I need to correct. So what do you need to do when you are creating a new portal? First, you must decide if you need to create a new group also -- is the new portal going to share users and roles with an existing portal or not? Next, you can create the portal, selecting the group for it that you chose or created. You will then need to create and assign an alias to your portal, possibly even multiple aliases -- something like yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com are typical, but it might be yourdomain.com/subfolder and www.yourdomain.com/subfolder, and there could be many others you want to assign. Then you need to make sure that the alias(s) you have chosen are actually setup correctly in IIS -- that means configured for ASP.NET v2.0 and pointing to the folder of the WebPortal files -- you do not copy any of the WebPortal files to another location. Then you can browse to the portal using the alias you assigned, login with the default user/password, and then you can setup your pages and users and everything else you need. Again, if you're familiar with other portals then this should be nearly the same process, but if you're new to portals then its a little different since you don't actually copy any files -- its all just configuration.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Getting started with a sample site

Mon, 01 May 2006 15:03:14 GMT

This is my first post, so forgive me if I take a little space to express my gratitude for the products you are sharing. Your generosity will make me a better programmer, and I will follow your example when I have something worth sharing.

My question is this: are new portals handled in the same way as a new page? Do I create the portal, then create a new Page in the Host page list? Also, how to make it visible to the outside world? I created a virtual directory, copied Default.aspx into it, but no joy.

Thanks again, Paul.
- Tom McNamee, Tucson, Arizona

Getting started with a sample site

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 01:57:30 GMT

Ok. Thanks Paul. That's put me on the right track. I'm keen to try it out soon and post some feedback.

Cheers,

Peter

Getting started with a sample site

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 00:36:39 GMT

Hi Peter:

There are no hard-coded aspx pages, except for the root default.aspx stub (see it here). Instead, like most portals, everything is data-driven -- i.e. that means that the definition of everything that is required to create the pages on the fly, given the user's roles, are stored in the database. So instead, when I want to create a page, I login to my portal and define a page, then I add modules, which can be as simple as user controls, but in most cases are a little more involved, and then add the content to those page-specific modules, also called parts once they are part of a page. The advantages are that the developer focuses on creating modules, instead of the site plumbing, and the site owners can create their own pages and content, and those pages can vary by role and the content can be searchable -- and that's just the basic advantages.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Getting started with a sample site

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 00:01:07 GMT

Hi Paul,

I'm a subscriber and I'm quite new to ASP.NET in general and was wondering if you could include some of the aspx files of one of your portals so I can get a better understanding on how the framework is used. I know you've included the wilson dot net web site code as a download but this is the legacy version and doesn't include the latest version which uses the framework. That would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Peter

How to access newly created portal

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:30:01 GMT

That was it! I knew there was something simple I was missing. Thanks for the tip! I look forward to digging in and see what you've done here...

How to access newly created portal

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:18:04 GMT

Have you mapped that "alias" in IIS to an application that points to the WebPortal? That's an assumption that all of these portal type solutions expect, but which is seldom documented well -- and I'm certainly guilty of that here. Think of it this way, the WebPortal will look at urls it gets and use the "alias" to determine and execute the correct portal -- but the WebPortal must first be given that url, which is the job of the web server to determine what application executes.

And by the way, you are correct that the Host doesn't tinker with each individual portal beyond the very high level settings, so you will have to go into each portal to set it up.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

How to access newly created portal

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:13:22 GMT

I've created a new portal, but no matter what I do I can't seem to access it, I always get a 'page not found' error. I have no problems accessing the default Admin Portal.

I've created a new group named 'TestGroup' and then a new portal named 'TestPortal' which I associated with 'TestGroup'. I've created a new alias, and I've tried numerous different aliases ('localhost/TestPortal', 'localhost/WilsonWebPort/TestPortal', etc...) but I can't seem to access the new portal and I don't see any way to setup pages for the new portal in the Host settings.

I'm sure there's something I'm missing here, but how do you setup and access a new, basic portal?

Thanks for any insight you can provide...

ASP.NET Development Server: Images do not show?

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 21:05:51 GMT

This should now work fine in v1.0.0.1.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

ObjectSpace: Entity Object not being Tracked - Wilson.WebPortal.Core.Role:1

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 21:05:04 GMT

This should be fixed in v1.0.0.1 -- weird how sometimes it worked and sometimes not. You'll want to delete any incomplete portals that were created and recreate them since they basically weren't usable as you noticed. To do that you'll need to go to the database itself and delete the two pages that were created for that portal, after you delete the two parts associated with those two pages -- then you can delete the portal itself (from the database or the host portal).

And sorry this took me a while to respond to -- I'm not sure how I let it slip past me even a few days.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

ASP.NET Development Server: Images do not show?

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 14:21:31 GMT

Hi chauey:

Take a look at this thread. I'll see what I can do to incorporate a configurable fix to this soon.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

ASP.NET Development Server: Images do not show?

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 14:19:00 GMT

I'm not using IIS, trying to use the personal web server with VS.NET 2005.. the images do now show up when i browse the pages.. very odd.. any ideas? Even if i navigate straight to the images' URLs, I get nothing...

-chauey

ObjectSpace: Entity Object not being Tracked - Wilson.WebPortal.Core.Role:1

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 15:59:43 GMT

Hi Paul,

I've downloaded the WebPortalDemo, and have installed it as an IIS web app locally (ASP.NET 2.0). I log in as AdminUser, etc. When I try to create a portal I get the following error:

ObjectSpace: Entity Object not being Tracked - Wilson.WebPortal.Core.Role:1

It seems, though, that a portal has been created, as I cannot delete it, and there are pages, Parts, etc in the DB. I can't, however, edit the portal itself. Is this because of the above error, or because I need to do something else.

I've tried using both the Access DB and the SQL DB (MSDE), but to no avail.

I don't necessarily need to create other portals now, but would like to keep the main portal for the 'Host' as you suggest in your readme.

The product looks great, and, as a user of DotNetNuke, I hope that WilsonWebPortal remains less complex than DNN. What about interfacing with DNN modules?

Regards,

Sean

ps. Sorry to hear that UIMapper is going. It has saved me hours, possibly days, of work on maintenance screens. I'll definitely continue to use it.