Blog Entry: 3/25/2006 4:51:15 PM
Interesting.. Yes, the SMTP service is turned on. This is my boogle. If they are both installed, then it should in theory work. But for some reason, it is being subborn and not working., This post unfortutely needs to be here because this application has been the biggest pain in the neck for me you could possibly imagine. This is not because of problems with the application, but because of people's general lack of knowlegde regarding ASP.NET. This post totally voices my stance on what sort of knowledge you need to have and also the fact that I am not going to support anything but general installation on a correctly and professionaly set up live server.
ASPProtect.NET is a great application but using ASP.NET requires a lot more basic knowledge than using classic ASP and there are a lot of basic low level ASP.NET things that need to be set up correctly for an application like ASPProtect.NET to run. These are things I do not cover because you should know the ASP.NET basics when using an application as complex as this. It's just that I don't have time to nor should I have to teach people the basics of ASP.NET. I don't charge nearly enough for ASPProtect.NET to offer that kind of support.
So, I will say it one more time. ASPProtect.NET is targeted towards experienced Visual Studio.NET developers that know how to work with Code Behind VB.NET and are familiar with basic ASP concepts such as IIS application settings, the .NET framework, the aspnet_client folder, and the basics of the web.config file. If you are using ASP.NET for whatever reason you need to know about these things. The best way is to get some good books and do set up ASP.NET on a local development machine so you can start learning.
If you are one of the ASP.NET challenged let me say this as well.
Stick with Classic ASP. ASP.NET is a step in the wrong direction for the average user which I like to refer to as "Joe Coder". Classic ASP is very powerful and easy to pick up. ASP.NET is not easy to pick up and never will be for a lot of people. In my opinion it’s actually the wrong technology to use for anyone other than big corporations who need extreme scalability in their applications or for the hobbyist or object oriented programmer who just wants to use the latest and greatest. Ask yourself if you really want to deal with compiling Code Behind code each time you make changes to your web site as opposed to just editing some files in notepad real quick like you can do with classic ASP ? Do you have the money to purchase and use Visual Studio.NET or are you going to struggle with compiling all your ASP.NET pages using a command line compiler and a batch file ? Yes, you can build ASP.NET code that isn't code behind but why even bother if that is the case because your missing the point of ASP.NET if you do that and missing out on a lot of powerful new features and concepts.
When I do custom projects for bigger clients I usually end up using ASP.NET because they want to go that way and understand the time and money involved. When I do any of my own projects I use Classic ASP because the truth is you can still make some rockin busy scalable web sites with Classic ASP just like you can still make great web sites with CGI, PP, Cold Fusion.. etc etc. Look around the web because a lot of the biggest sites out there still use those scripting technologies and their stuff runs very well. ASP.NET is a lot of hype and although some things about it are plain awesome it is an environment best suited for real object oriented programmers, not the weekend code warriors.
The other thing to keep in mind about classic ASP is the shear abundance of applications and scripts available for it. ASP.NET can be expensive for that reason alone as there still is a shortage of good time tested applications out there and what is out there is always priced a lot higher.
In addition to that half of the ASP.NET applications out there are just half baked poorly converted versions of their Classic ASP counterparts. Is that the kind of thing you want to sink twice the money into or would you rather have something that runs well and has been tweaked year after year into a rock solid product?
To make things worse a lot of the hosting companies out there offering ASP.NET hosting are severely limiting the basic abilities of ASP.NET because of various security concerns. This means if you go with a Host that does that 75% of the asp.net stuff out there won't run on the hosted server. Isn't that wonderful ?
Now, Let's make things even worse. So far every time Microsoft has released a new version of ASP.NET a lot of things from the previous version have stopped working and needed to be modified to work correctly. Is that really something you will have the time, resources, and energy to deal with.
You may ask "but is classic ASP going to be around 5 years from now?" Though you never really know until the new version of windows server ships I say "Hell Yes" it will be. According to my sources at Port80 Software who work very closely with the folks at Microsoft (as well as many other sources out there) it will almost certainly be in Longhorn which is the next version of Windows Server. Longhorn probably won't come out until 2007 and will be popular for 3-4 years after that. The version of windows server after that will most likely support Classic ASP as well and if it doesn't I am sure there will be a way to make ASP run on it. If you really look around a lot of hosting companies are still running Windows Server 2000 which is 5 years old at the moment. The bottom line is Classic ASP helped put Microsoft web technologies on the map. Microsoft can not simply drop it because if they do they give up a dominate market share to the scripting competition being PHP, CGI, Cold Fusion.. etc etc PHP for instance a huge installed base on many platforms which are essentially free. ASP.NET can not compete with that in any way and not supporting Classic ASP would put microsoft in a bad position.
Take it from me. If you are a weekend code warrior/script kiddie. You'll be a lot happier sticking with classic ASP. You will also have save a lot of money and you can still have great web sites. There are tons of great applications out there in ASP and ASP still is and always will be the easiest scripting language to work with and learn. Better yet look around on sites like www.4guysfromrolla.com and see if you actually understand any of the latest articles. If it looks like Greek to you that is yet another sign that you should stick to classic ASP.
Personally, I will be focusing just as much time and effort on ASP.NET as I will on Classic ASP in the years to come for a few reasons.
- Because I sell software I obviously need to convert/re-write most of my appIications to work with ASP.NET. My living may eventually depend on it.
- Because I love using the latest technologies I want to continue to develop using ASP.NET.
- Because I do many custom projects for various clients using ASP.NET is a must.
- Because in some cases using ASP.NET over classic ASP makes total sense.
Just don't fall for the HYPE folks. I am one of the few established developers out there that has a set of Balls and is willing to put the truth out there and see past the bullsh*t. If you go ASP.NET do it because you seriosuly think you need the power and scalabilty and money and time is not an issue or because you are a hobbiest and object oriented programmer who likes working with and has time to work with the latest and greatest web scripting technolgies out there. I truly believe that so far ASP.NET is as much a success as it is a failure. I am sure some of you out there know what I mean by that.
All this being said you should also realize that ASPProtect.NET is a little different than your average ASP.NET application because it uses a lot of advanced ASP.NET techniques and you essentially use it to password protect your existing scripts meaning you need to integrate your stuff with our stuff in a sense. If you just go buy some random ASP.NET application like a classifieds system or storefront it is probably just going to run on it's own an therefore will be a lot easier to set up and deal with.
Here are some links you folks should read as well.
http://rtfm.atrax.co.uk/infinitemonkeys/articles/asp/905.asp
http://www.itnewsgroups.net/group/microsoft.public.inetserve r.asp.general/topic2074.aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;%5Bln%5D;L ifeWin
Chris Willians
http://www.cjwsoft.com/about.asp ,
I just installed ASPProtect on my site. The instructions were definately on the target. Very very good instructions.
But... Isn't there always a but ??? 
I needed to setup my site with MS SQL and it is hosted so I don't have Enterprise Manager. I tried the web based Enterprise Manager and any other one I could find. But, I kept getting errors when trying to use the SQL Script.
I finally had to go back to my work where we do have the licenses and get an SQL Admin to use Enterprise Manager to run the script and it worked finally.
I don't know if this is a common problem ??? But, maybe you would want to look at the SQL Server script or make a different version that would work with the Web Based SQL manager.
Thanks , Christopher,
I have a follow-up to this question.
Is there a way to get the photo descriptions to save with actual spaces instead of the HTML space code all of the time?
I know that is does this if you hit Enter while typing a description, because it creates a 'br' tag. The main reason I am asking is because if the user does not enter a line break, the description is saved a single long string and the pic_window.asp page is generated with one long description which makes the page very wide.
I tried to get around this by changing the description style in pic_window.asp to reflect a value like 50% or 200 pixels, and I have tried putting it into a table with a fixed width, but there is no effect.
Thanks!
- Jason , <%@ LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" %>
<!--#INCLUDE FILE="check_user_inc.asp"-->
<%
Response.Write(Session("Groups"))
%> , OMFG, Can you be more specific on the javascript I should look for? Can it be combined with ASPBanner?, I'm using the groups protect feature on my pages. None of them seem to close the session after clicking 'logoff'. I can tell because if I hit the back button and return to the group-protected page, hit 'refresh', the page refreshes, I'm not asked to log in again.
On the other hand, when I open a page that's protected by an access level and click 'logoff' (uses same logoff asp file to logoff), it seems to work fine - if I go back a page and refresh, it asks me to log in.
Just wondering - is anybody else having problems like this? Maybe I screwed something up in the few adjustments I made a while back. Any idea what it might be? , Humm.. that should have worked fine
why are you getting a "OLE DB" error I wonder ?
I need more information.
Database being used and version ?
Server OS Version?
Connection String being used ?
etc etc , Our login works great, variables even help determine menu options. When user logs on, however, it opens in a new page. Is there a setting somewhere that sets whether you can open in a new or existing page?
Also, when you log off , Glad your getting the hang of it.
no difference as far as that goes. It is just different ways to reference the server side include file and it's location on the server cwilliams38457.6019675926, The problem was that I did not have
ConnectionString = "Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)}.... in the connection string.
Thank You.
, Wondering what might be causing a long delay to display the login screen? This does seem to be intermittent. Could be server/ISP related? Have experienced enough times to justify posting this question.
I can count up to 20 seconds after clicking on the link. After login all other selections zip right along without problem.
http://gibsoncity.us/aspbanner/
Thanks, Lance lancem38319.6117939815, I am using ASPProtect's password program, which has been very successful, for managing over 1,500 military veterans' memberships at http://www.vspa.com. What I am trying to do now is utilize the "Groups" code, as generated by the Admin page, to prevent members with expired accounts (and non-members) from accessing restricted "members only" .ASP pages they may have bookmarked, or found via web search. The code generated and used is as follows:
<%@ LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" %>
<!-- Begin ASPProtect Code -->
<!-- Groups with access to this page. ( * ADMIN * Member Current * Member Life * Officer/Staff * ) -->
<% GROUPACCESS = "10,12,14,19" %>
<!--#INCLUDE FILE="check_user_inc.asp"-->
<!-- End ASPProtect Code -->
The above is placed over the <html><head> statements on the page.
When I am logged in the code works perfectly! When I log off and try the URL again, the page appears in its entirety but with a Login box for Username and Login Password at the top of the page. You may view the problem at: http://www.vspa.com/aspprotect/vspa-password-enter.asp .
What I would like to have happen is expired members and non-members would be sent (or Redirected) to a Login page. I do not want the Login password box to merely be inserted above the page that I am trying to keep them from visiting.
Don Poss,
VSPA Webmaster , I am not talking about image resizing. I need to know if it is possible to limit the upload to images where their height or width is less than 500 PIX. , Thank you so much that works great.
I will test with the other settings on the email server again thanks for the advice,
best regards , check permissions for the user you are connecting to the SQL database.
http://support.cjwsoft.com/code/moreinfo122-1.htm
That user may not have permission to make new data
Also, check all field and table settings manually by comparing them to the SQL creation script we provide. You may very well be missing auto increment and primary keys which would make adding new data not work.
It is most likely one of those two things. , I have ASPProtect up and running and I was able to log in with little to now problem after following all of the directions.
I imported my data base of users (approx 5300) into the access db, and now it times out just letting me log in.
I've got full access to the web server to make any changes on that end that I need.
any ideas?
,
it has been 3 days since I logged myself in under Admin, and all the user information on the User Activiy screen seemed to be gone.
is there any specific length of period it refreshes its user information??
, also.. every once in a while I get some nervous person concerned about security... and the pros and cons of having parent paths enabled.
etc etc etc
so let me add this bit of info..
I don’t know what your hosting company will say because it is an iffy topic and those that understand it have a hard time explaining it to someone who doesn't. Also usually the hosting company doesn't have a clue except they heard it was a security risk.
Here is the low down from someone that really understands it...
(well, at least I think I do)
The only real security risks are from YOU and possibly other people hosting on the same server if they have parent paths enabled that is.
Meaning your site visitors can't possibly do anything with it unless of course you let them upload and run their own asp files to the server.
Anyway.. if YOU run malicious asp scripts you could potentially attack other sites on the server and look at things you shouldn't. As could other sites on the same server do to you I suppose.
So, unless you plan on doing that or some other site admin on the server does it to you its not really a concern. Just an advantage in coding abilities.
If you attack someone elses site on the server or lurk where you shouldnt then you are probably violating your hosting agreement.
99% of the time everyone gets all nervous over nothing.. half the people nervous about this have sites nobody would ever want to hack anyway.
Many people with a really important/busy sites are going to have a dedicated server somewhere so the setting is not relevant..
The hosting companies of course have to warn you.
This setting was enabled by default for years on IIS4-IIS5. I never once heard one single real story about anyone attacking anything because of this setting. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen but I am just telling you what I know.
This is all my opinion so take it for what it is...
If you are a Hosting Company your better off turning it on at the customers request, giving them a warning about it, and in turn having happy customers.
The big hosting companies like Alentus and MaximumASP do it...
There are far worse things than this to let people do after all.
Beleive it or not I have actually been in servers where they gave the anonymous webserver acount modify permissions EVERYWHERE yet they disabled parent paths ???? cwilliams38391.6024189815, I down loaded your latest ASPProtect.NET_v1.4 and now when i try to get in the admin area it won't let me in. The admin box is selected in the database under the admin user and i can update my user information (password and Address, not username). Is there something that was changed on this version or is it more likely user error on my part? What do you think i should try first?, Your SQL statement to the database is the key.
You want to change the sortby hyperlink on that page so that it will in turn change the dynamic sql statement to sort the way you want
Find
?SORTBY=Date_Created
change it to
?SORTBY=Date_Created+ASC
or maybe
?SORTBY=Date_Created+DESC
One of them is the default anyway, but I cant remember which is which off hand so just try them both till you get the desired result
near the top you can also change the default sortby when thet page is loaded
SORTBY = Request("SORTBY")
If SORTBY = "" Then
SORTBY = "Name"
End If
there you would use a space though.. not a "+" sign when adding the ASC or DESC
The + sign is only used in the hyperlinks because it means a space for browsers that can't deal with spaces in links cwilliams38406.6011458333, sounds like the data/export folde does not have permissions, MODS are NOT SUPPORTED.. questions about them will not be answered in the support forums. If you want to use a MOD you are considered an advanced user and will need to sort out any issues that may or may not come up.
MODS are used at your own risk and may or may not require certain basic coding skills. , Hi,
I have just one quick question, I know this works with Paypal but does this work with Merchant Account?
How difficult it is to make it workable with Merchant account? I appreciate your answer.
Thanks.
, OK. If no return page is set, do they end up on a PayPal confirmation page and have to navigate back to my site by going Back or typing the web address?
Nick , Regarding hosting companies..
Now.. obviously if you are hosting on someone elses server you may not be able to set permissions like this.
Ultimately, if you are hosting somewhere and ASP and Database connectivity is part of your hosting plan. It is the hosting company's responsibility to set these permissions for you when asked or to give you a special interface to do so on your own. If they are not helping you do this then maybe it is time to get a hosting company that is serious about your ASP Hosting Needs.
Also... JUST TO BE PERFECTLY CLEAR
The permissions we are talking about cannot be set via FTP or Frontpage access to your web site. They must be set like shown above or via a special interface meant to set the permissions correctly. For all you people out there messing with the permissions you see in FTP and Frontpage.. you are wasting your time and possibly creating problems in your web.
All ASP scripts that communicate with an Access Database, Upload Pictures, Modify Text files.... are going to need these permissions set in some way or another. We have no control over that fact. cwilliams38360.69125, Hi, lets start with about when did you purchase and download the application so I know what version of the code you have., I didn't think that was it, but just to prove, I just viewed the same album from 2 different IP's. It did not increment the "hits". , still.. its got to be somthing along those lines.. I have seen times when even dbo didnt have full rights to a particular database so permissions should always be manually checked..
The import data routine is most likely the source of the trouble
For troubleshooting sake I would create a fresh installation from scratch using the sql script we provide and a new SQL user. Then see if that works. If it does then try to import your data into that.
There are no other things I can think of doing. Sometimes you just have to start with a clean slate. , in Control_pic.asp is there way to wrap the description field so that it doesn't go outside the table.
Thanks , Oh, it does seem to put the photo in the correct directory., Your suggestion worked - thanks - , It sounds like permissions... to the database folder specifically
they are not correct
It could also be that your odbc drivers are very new and you are not using a new enough version of the access Database. I recommened using the 2002-2003 verison of MSACCESS
Now.. if using a SQL Server Database permissions to certain tables are handled in enterpise manager cwilliams38303.5892708333, Hi,
I am just wondering if anyone else has had this problem. Even though the guestbook is empty, it takes just about 20 to 30 seconds for the guestbook/default.asp lto oad. Is this normal has anyone else has had this problem.
Thanks , here is the answer
http://www.iisanswers.com/IIS51.htm
CDONTS
CDONTS (Colloaborative Data Objects for NT Server) is a feature of NT and W2K that allows you to easily send mail from a web page using the SMTP server. The simplicity of the code and widespread availability of free scripts employing CDONTS has resulted in CDONTS being widely adopted.
Quite a surprise to many administrators to discover that IIS 5.1 does not support CDONTS as do IIS 4.0 and IIS 5.0. This has been replaced by CDOSYS which appears to have more capability, but it is not quite as simple to use. See: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q195 683 for more details.
You can enable CDONTS on XP by copying CDONTS.DLL from a Windows 2000 installation to your XP system’s Windows\System32 folder (default name). Then at command prompt Windows\System32 run REGSRV32 CDONTS.DLL. The extent of my testing on this was to deliver one piece of mail, so this should not be construed as a complete analysis of the effectiveness of this technique. cwilliams38392.8260300926, sorry for the confusion, but I am not that good with the tech explantions yet.
what it boils down to is I have an Access Database containing over 100
members names. I want only those people to be able to get into
the secure pages.
Thanks. Harvey
, Thank you for the response to my question. In the mean time if I can figure any workaround I will post it here. , also.. you could try chaning your connection string to set the current language to english like in this example..
BannerConnectionString = "Provider=sqloledb;Data Source=127.0.0.1;Initial Catalog=aspbanner;User Id=aspbanneruser;Password=temp;Current
Language=English;"
I do not know if that actually works but from what I have been researching it looks valid and it may solve your problem.
Also: The value may need to be Current Language=us_english
You'll have to try them, After turning off the friendly errors, here is the detail.
Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0131'
Disallowed Parent Path
/users/register.asp, line 16
The Include file '../dataconn_inc.asp' cannot contain '..' to indicate the parent directory.
ANSWER:
http://support.cjwsoft.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5&K W=Disallowed+Parent+Path+ lancem38310.6408101852,
Timecard Entry: 3/25/2006 4:51:15 PM
WWNY TV, email, voicemail, another nutso day with the phone/problems/questions, NCC Systems, D & D Power Sports, Curtis Furniture, Taylor decoys, registering and transfering domains, lunch, Draft Governing Board consent for Broadview Networks; review letter; Telergy contract, spoke to john moody- islandscapes about a web site- passed lead onto Lisa, did callbacks, Took the code that I was able to find for the message board and got it working on my machine. I then formatted and changed some items so that it would peform only the functions I needed. Had Dave and Tim look at the board to make sure they liked it, emails, Got a call from Andy wondering if I did anything about PRI, so I called Bell again and checked in the RAS units to see if there was more I could do., Picked up mail and opened. Posted accounts. Credit card authorizations, coupon referrals, customer inquiries, and ans. phone., configure circuit installed at my house, Meeting with Judy Fiorentino, lunch, Froggy97.Com - Complete froggy freebies interface and public freebies page., Lunch, 5000 and 5500 are ringing busy. had a lot of calls about that. helped a customer with her email. i had to telnet into that, Lunch, **Agency Ideas - tried to implement some nt user auth stuff, Closing books, Payroll , Work went decent. Nothing big going down. Did some call backs and Answered calls., Biz Fair, Crystal Reports, CostGuard training, worked on fixing small quirks on work system (internal), talked with jeff/lewis realtors and board
also worked on power point for presentations, Reset modems., phones, Did voicemail callbacks from last night. Got a very unhappy customer. Emailed Ron and Gary about it. , general, regent, oktober fest prep,
|
