1. Open up your template document in word, and put any target areas in special Brackets, the text would read something like “I, [FULLNAME] do hereby affirm that”.  I found that the target area had to be in uppercase, I’m not sure why
2. Go to “Save As Html, Filtered”, and save it in a writeable directory.
3. In your C# code, first load the entire document into a string
4. Convert that string into an instance of StringBuilder
5. Use the StringBuilder Replace function, it would look something like this –  sb.Replace(“[FULLNAME]“, strFullName);
6. Create a TextWriter, and write the StringBuilder to it – make sure you’re saving it with a “.doc” extension.
7. Close the TextWriter

All told, the code looks like this

//Create a new filename

string strFileName = System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString();

string strPathRoot = “d:\\domains\\MyDomain\\Word\\”;

string strPath = strPathRoot + “TemplateHtml.doc”;

string str = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(strPath);

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

sb.AppendLine(s);

//replace the text

sb.Replace(“[FULLNAME]“, strFullName);

//save it out

TextWriter tw = new StreamWriter(strPathRoot + strFileName + “.doc”);

// write a line of text to the file

tw.WriteLine(sb.ToString());

// close it

tw.Close();

tw.Dispose();

That’s it!

photo credit: pvera

The Cause: URL Rewrite is new, and it was an oversight on Microsoft’s part.

The Solution: You have to use two rules, first checking to see if the url contains the https.  Here is a sample below

<rewrite>
<rules>
<rule name=”Canonical Hostname – No HTTPS”>
<match url=”(.*)” />
<conditions logicalGrouping=”MatchAll” trackAllCaptures=”false”>
<add input=”{HTTPS}” pattern=”OFF” />
<add input=”{HTTP_HOST}” pattern=”^stronico\.com$” negate=”true” />
</conditions>
<action type=”Redirect” url=”http://stronico.com/{R:1}” />
</rule>
<rule name=”Canonical Hostname – With HTTPS”>
<match url=”(.*)” />
<conditions logicalGrouping=”MatchAll” trackAllCaptures=”false”>
<add input=”{HTTPS}” pattern=”ON” />
<add input=”{HTTP_HOST}” pattern=”^stronico\.com$” negate=”true” />
</conditions>
<action type=”Redirect” url=”https://stronico.com/{R:1}” />
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>

That’s it! It took me an embarassingly long time to figure that one out.
photo credit: Marco Fedele

“System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:25″

The Cause: SMTP services are not installed on the server, they do not seem to be installed by default.

The Solution: SMTP is not configured on the server.  Go ahead and add in SMTP (it is not installed by default).  It will take about 60 seconds to install.  You will then get the error  “Mailbox unavailable. The server response was: 5.7.1 Unable to relay for user@domain.com”.  You then must run on the SMTP relaying services via the IIS 6 interface (for some reason) in start/control panel/administrative tools/internet information services and add the current account from there.

I have looked over many, many modal popup schemes and decided to use the Queness modal popup method.  It is  the most usable of the methods I’ve seen.   Look for it on the main Stronico site when it launches!

The Problem: When programming in ASP.net MVC in Visual Studio 2008 you create a new folder, in the views directory, then create a new view in that directory called Index. For example I was working on the Stronico public site (coming soon, really) and created a directory called “Contact”, and a view called “Index.aspx” so the url could be http://www.Stronico.com/Contact/. I also created the Controller “ContactController.cs”. When I went to the staging site on LocalHost, I got the “File Not Found” error.

The Cause: I never did find out. I tried changing the verbiage slightly, in case contact was a protected word, I reset IIS, I did several other things. None of the usual methods worked.

The Solution: I finally just closed the solution and restarted it and I was able to get to the contact page. No idea why that worked, but it did.

Sort of a a lame post, but I did spend slightly more than fifteen minutes trying to see why the page would not appear, only to find it to be a simple Visual Studio error.