Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Overview of this book

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 is a dynamic web publishing system with which you can build websites quickly and cost-efficiently. MCMS provides the administration, authoring, and data management functionality, and you provide the website interface, logic, and workflow. Once your website is up and running, your content contributors can add and edit content on their own, without the need to work with developers or the IT department. First time developers of Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 face a relatively steep learning curve. Not only are they expected to be conversant in the Microsoft .NET Framework, they are also required to be familiar with the concepts of MCMS 2002. Many beginners to MCMS start out by looking at the example site that ships with the product; tweaking it, dissecting it and turning it inside out using the obscure code comments as markers. However, when it comes to starting their own website from scratch, many are baffled ? where do they begin? This book exists to answer that question; teaching the essential concepts of MCMS 2002 in a clear, straightforward and practical manner. Containing answers to some of the most asked questions in developer newsgroups, this book is a treasure trove of tricks and tips for solving the problems faced by MCMS developers. This is a unique resource focused exclusively on the needs of developers using MCMS. It doesn?t waste time and pages on user or administrator level information that is well covered in other documentation. It?s a distillation of practical experience that developers need to get results, fast. The authors carefully structured example project complements and extends the knowledge gained from an initial look at the examples that ship with MCMS.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server
Credits
About the Authors
Introduction

Debugging the Template File: The Wrong Way


One MCMS developer was overheard asking another how to debug a template file. To which, the reply was "We don't debug. Use Response.Write."

While introducing Response.Write statements before and after every block of problem code can help you determine which variable is holding the wrong values, it is an outdated debugging technique left over from ASP days. You have to go guess which block of code or variable is causing problems and you get no clue as to how the code is being called within routines or what's really happening.

Another popular technique that works when debugging regular ASP.NET web applications might lead an MCMS developer to set TropicalGreen as the Start Up project and make the template file the start page. We'll see why this doesn't work in the following section.

Attempting to Test the Plant.aspx Template File: The Wrong Way

Let's try setting the Plant template file as the start page and see what happens:

  1. In Solution Explorer, right...