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 Correct Way


To debug a template file correctly, we need to start the debugger from a posting instead of a template file. However, postings do not appear as physical pages within the Solution Explorer so it is not as straightforward as setting the posting as a start page.

There are three ways of getting the debugger to start from a posting:

  1. Create a debug page that points to a posting.

  2. Start the Debugger from a URL.

  3. Attach the Debugger to the ASP.NET Worker Process (aspnet_wp.exe on Windows 2000 and Windows XP or w3wp.exe on Windows Server 2003).

Debugging with a Debug Start Page

One way to debug is to create a debug page. The debug page is simply an HTML file that contains hyperlinks to a posting that uses the template you wish to debug.

Creating the Debug Page

Let's create a dummy page that links to the plant catalog. First, if you haven't already, stop debugging by going to the Visual Studio .NET toolbar and selecting Debug | Stop Debugging.

When debugging stops...