Virtual Home Pages - Inetserver

John,

I know that it is possible to create Virtual Directories (which is
what you need) via script. A quick search just turned up the
following in a post by Chris Crowe:

>Question #1 - You can progmatically create virtual directories by
using
>ADSI. An example of this is in the following folders.

>IIS4) \winnt\system32\inetsrv\adminsamples
>IIS5) \INETPUB\AdminScripts

>The name of the script is mkwebdir.vbs which is a Window Scripting
Host
>script (VBScript) that uses ADSI (Active Directory Sevices Interface)
to
>create the virtual directory.

If you create multiple virtual Directories and point them to the same
physical directory, you can have a default.asp page that checks
request.servervariables to determine what URL the user wants.

Hope that helps,
Mark Reichard

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Multilingual Web Development - http://www.idataconsultingservices.com
Simple Content Management - http://www.synapsecm.com
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"John South" <jsouth@cix.co.uk> wrote in message
news:d2aa22df.0308210043.76c886d1@posting.google.com...
> I need a Reality Check from you guys out there...
>
> I'm setting up a system where there will be 000's of users accessing a
> single site, but each expecting to see their own unique home page,
> which I will generate from a database and ASP.
>
> I could give them a URL like this: "www.website.com?id=username"
> but would rather give them a URL like this:
> "www.website.com/username"
>
> I could do it by creating a separate sub-directory for each user, with
> a default.asp but I really don't want 000's of directories.
>
> Is there a way I could intercept "www.website.com/username" when there
> is no sub-directory (via error handling maybe) and pass the request to
> a single asp page that can do the business?
>
> Or this that just wistful thinking?
>
> John South
> Pangbourne UK

How about a variation of your first thought : www.website.com?username

Then ASP can just check for Request.QueryString() to retrieve the
"username".

Changing a slash to a question mark requires no new directories.

Thanks, that certainly helps. I didn't realize you could just enter ?username.

I'd still really like to find a way of replacing the ? with a /
because that's what people expect, but I'm running out of ideas now.


"McKirahan" <News@McKirahan.com> wrote in message news:<lDV2b.270553$YN5.185279@sccrnsc01>...
> "John South" <jsouth@cix.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:d2aa22df.0308210043.76c886d1@posting.google.com...
> > I need a Reality Check from you guys out there...
> >
> > I'm setting up a system where there will be 000's of users accessing a
> > single site, but each expecting to see their own unique home page,
> > which I will generate from a database and ASP.
> >
> > I could give them a URL like this: "www.website.com?id=username"
> > but would rather give them a URL like this:
> > "www.website.com/username"
> >
> > I could do it by creating a separate sub-directory for each user, with
> > a default.asp but I really don't want 000's of directories.
> >
> > Is there a way I could intercept "www.website.com/username" when there
> > is no sub-directory (via error handling maybe) and pass the request to
> > a single asp page that can do the business?
> >
> > Or this that just wistful thinking?
> >
> > John South
> > Pangbourne UK
>
> How about a variation of your first thought : www.website.com?username
>
> Then ASP can just check for Request.QueryString() to retrieve the
> "username".
>
> Changing a slash to a question mark requires no new directories.

"John South" <jsouth@cix.co.uk> wrote in message
news:d2aa22df.0308272354.a9fd8b@posting.google.com...
> Thanks, that certainly helps. I didn't realize you could just enter
?username.
>
> I'd still really like to find a way of replacing the ? with a /
> because that's what people expect, but I'm running out of ideas now.
>

Perhaps you could create a custom 404 page (see below) that would call, say,
"404.asp" which would examine the failed URL to see if it contained a
"username" (i.e. not a file name) and generate the user's page from that.

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=http://{yoursite}/404.asp">
<title>404 Not Found</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

A Google search on "custom 404" found :

http://www.plinko.net/404/custom.asp
http://www.pageresource.com/zine/custom404.htm
http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/custom404.shtml






> "McKirahan" <News@McKirahan.com> wrote in message
news:<lDV2b.270553$YN5.185279@sccrnsc01>...
> > "John South" <jsouth@cix.co.uk> wrote in message
> > news:d2aa22df.0308210043.76c886d1@posting.google.com...
> > > I need a Reality Check from you guys out there...
> > >
> > > I'm setting up a system where there will be 000's of users accessing a
> > > single site, but each expecting to see their own unique home page,
> > > which I will generate from a database and ASP.
> > >
> > > I could give them a URL like this: "www.website.com?id=username"
> > > but would rather give them a URL like this:
> > > "www.website.com/username"
> > >
> > > I could do it by creating a separate sub-directory for each user, with
> > > a default.asp but I really don't want 000's of directories.
> > >
> > > Is there a way I could intercept "www.website.com/username" when there
> > > is no sub-directory (via error handling maybe) and pass the request to
> > > a single asp page that can do the business?
> > >
> > > Or this that just wistful thinking?
> > >
> > > John South
> > > Pangbourne UK
> >
> > How about a variation of your first thought : www.website.com?username
> >
> > Then ASP can just check for Request.QueryString() to retrieve the
> > "username".
> >
> > Changing a slash to a question mark requires no new directories.

"McKirahan" <News@McKirahan.com> wrote in message news:<lJk3b.120077$2x.34673@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net>...
>
> Perhaps you could create a custom 404 page (see below) that would call, say,
> "404.asp" which would examine the failed URL to see if it contained a
> "username" (i.e. not a file name) and generate the user's page from that.

Getting close now.... I'm investigating Custom 404 pages, but how do
you access the failed URL from inside the Custom 440 page? You don't
seem to have access to the normal asp functions.

"McKirahan" <News@McKirahan.com> wrote in message news:<lJk3b.120077$2x.34673@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net>...
> Perhaps you could create a custom 404 page (see below) that would call, say,
> "404.asp" which would examine the failed URL to see if it contained a
> "username" (i.e. not a file name) and generate the user's page from that.

Got it!!

It's now working just how I wanted: the user types in "www.website.com/username"
and gets directed to "www.website.com?username" or whereever i want to send him.
No need for directories, virtual or real.

The trick was to set the Custom404 page as a URL rather than a file in IIS.
Then it runs as a normal .asp page and I can get to the calling url with
request.ServerVariables("QUERY_STRING")

Thanks very much for you help and interest, it's been very much appreciated.

John South
Pangbourne UK

Hi John,
Sorry for intervenience.
In file global.asa in Session_OnStart event handling subprocedure
write statement:
Response.Redirect("your_default_page_URL")

Any time the user access any page of your Web Application for the first
time, that is starts session,
he/she will be redirected to the same start page.
If you don't know how to deal with global.asa file I'll give you further
instructions.
Good luck,
Dima

"John South" <jsouth@cix.co.uk> wrote in message
news:d2aa22df.0308260407.439d4c22@posting.google.com...
> Thanks Mark
>
> That's certainly a help.
> Do you see any effective limit on the number of virtual directories
> that can be set up in one web site? I need to be able to handle 9,999
> or more.
>
> I was hoping to find a way to intercept the incoming request, without
> having to set up real or virtual directories. Even if the set-up can
> be automatic I don't feel happy with thousands of virtual directories.
>
> What do you think?
>
> John South
> Pangbourne UK