Category: IIS Management

FTP a file from one server to another, automatically

We are using an ASP script to create iCal files from a database, so another department can display the events on their web-based calendar.

Their calendar page is outside the corporate firewall. The ASP script needs to reside on and IIS server within the firewall. I needed a fool-proof way to transfer the ical file nightly out to an external web server so it could be accessed by any calendar applications that need to use it. The best way I’ve found so far is to create a batch file with command-line FTP instructions, and add it to a Windows scheduled task.

  1. To do this with your own files, create a directory that will hold the batch file somewhere on the server. Since the batch file will contain your destination server’s ftp password in plaintext, you will want to secure the directory. Create a Windows or domain account whose password will never change. I happened to have a “utility” domain-based account that already had access to some parts of the server, so I gave that account rights to the new directory.

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How to set up an ODBC Data Source for a SQL Server database on a Windows Server

Many web applications require that you set up an ODBC Data Source which serves as a sort of pointer to a particular database which specifies which driver and credentials to use to connect. Here’s how to set up one for SQL Server/SQL Server Express on a Windows 2003 server.

  1. Select Start > Administrative Tools > Data Sources(ODBC)

     odbc data sources


  2. Select the System DSN tab, and click the Add button.

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Add phpMyAdmin to your Web Platform Installer IIS setup

One key item that seems to be inexplicably missing from Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer is some kind of front end like phpMyAdmin for administering mySQL databases. It installs one for SQL Server Express, but not for mySQL. Fortunately, it’s only a 5 minute job to install phpMyAdmin yourself. 

After running the Microsoft Web Platform Installer and installing whatever PHP/mySQL applications you want to run, download and decompress a copy of the latest version of phpMyAdmin from this page. Drop the folder containing the phpMyAdmin files into the inetpubwwwroot directory on your IIS server. Shorten the name of the folder to “phpmyadmin” or something appropriate when typing a URL.

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Microsoft Web Platform installer: Drupal on IIS, the easy way.

If you work with Windows servers, then you have probably gotten used to doing without the many opensource web applications taken for granted outside the enterprise environment. Drupal, WordPress, phpBB, Moodle, etc. were all out of reach. Yes, it was possible to install PHP and mySQL, but it took a level of commitment and dogged troubleshooting persistence that few people are willing to undertake.   

Well, now you can have your enterprise cake and your opensource software too! Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer, introduced a couple of years ago, makes the process of installing all those LAMP-style web apps easy. When I say easy, I really mean easy! It just works!

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Set up a Cron job in Windows to run an ASP script

If you are used to Linux environments, and working on a web application which needs to execute a function at regular intervals, you’d use a cron job. On Windows, you’d use a scheduled task instead. There is one part of the process that isn’t obvious, so here are the steps involved:

  1. Create the web page that executes the desired tasks – sending email, creating files, etc. For example, I have some ASP scripts that create RSS and iCal feeds from a proprietary database, that need to run daily. Record the URL for later.
  2. You will also need a domain account that can run the task, or a server account that can be used in perpetuity to run these types of tasks. I usually have a “fake” account that will never expire created for this type of thing.
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Umbraco installation error: The virtual path ‘/install/steps/welcome.ascx’ maps to another application

After installing “Umbraco,” you may get the following error:


The virtual path ‘/install/steps/welcome.ascx’ maps to another application, which is not allowed.

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This is because you have installed Umbraco in a virtual directory (not at the web root of the “Default Web Site” in IIS terminology). It is a path problem, easily corrected by fixing the paths in the web.config file.

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Use ABCpdf to generate pdfs of multi-paged html documents

I maintain a library of learning modules which are constantly under development and revision. Our users often want PDFs to print out or view off-line, but we can’t maintain up-to-date PDF’s of each module manually. We needed a way to make on-demand PDFs of whatever the current state of the module is when the pdf is requested.

After looking at many pdf solutions I settled on “ABCpdf ASP 6.0” by WebSuperGoo.com.

ABCpdf has the advantages of fairly low cost (about $400.00 for one server, or FREE if you link back to them), a better HTML-rendering engine than most, and an easy to learn API, so you can write custom dynamic PDF applications.

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How to run Red 5 on a shared IIS server on port 80

Setting up Red5 on a box which also contains a web server can be a challenge if you are restricted to using specific ports because of a firewall. Here is how we set up Red5 on a Windows 2003 server which also contains a production IIS server.

Our firewall only allows traffic on ports 80 and 443. This is non-negotiable, so we needed to work around the requirement.

The folks – in particular Walter Tak – on the Red5 mailing list pointed me in the right direction: Make another IP (or two) for Red 5 to run under.

IIS was already using ports 80 and 443, so the system administrator made two additional IPs for Red5 to use, one for rtmp and one for http. He then changed the settings in the Default Website Properties in IIS Manager: In Web Site Identification: IP Address, instead of (All Unassigned), he selected the single IP which we wanted IIS to listen on. We did not want IIS to interfere with port 80 on the IPs used by Red5.

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