Support section for Commskit users
For support issues that cannot be solved using these pages, the user guide or the built-in help feature in your control panel, please email support@commskit.org.uk It is helpful to entitle your email 'Support request' and to supply your username. Please supply as much detail as possible when corresponding.
Support applies to use of your control panel and file uploading to your webspace. Regrettably we cannot offer support in the process of building and developing you own website.
Scripting with ASP is a relatively advanced process and whilst we will try to give general advice, most scripting issues fall beyond the remit of our support undertaking. se under ASP below for links to external ASP scripting resources.
Analysis of support requests in the recent year indicates that the two most common issues are configuring email client programmes such as Outlook/Outlook Express, and use of file transfer to update and maintain sites. These areas are comprehensively addressed in the supplied user guide and in the online help, but further specific pointers are supplied below.
Web-based Email
Once you have set up new email addresses via your control panel, you will need a means of collecting and sending your email. If you do not have an off-line email programme such as Outlook, then you can use the free Commskit webmail service. To access this, point your browser to webmail.commskit.org.uk
You will be presented with a pop-up screen which requires you to enter your email username and your password. it is important to note that the email username is always of the form commskitusername-hostname, where hostname is the part before the @ symbol. So, for the email address support@commskit.org.uk, the login to use will be commskit-support. To give a further example, if your Commskit account username is stjulians, and the hostname of your email address is michael, the login will be stjulians-michael. (Do note that your username may not be the same as your domain name
Your password is entered in the second box. Note that the password will either have been set up by you when you created email addresses in your Commskit control panel, or if you do not control the account, it should have been supplied to you by the account controller.
Email client configuration
If your Internet access supplier allows you to use their own SMTP server, then you may wish to use this instead of the Commskit server. Note however that in order to collect your mail you must always use the commskit pop3 server.
When configuring any offline client programme such as Outlook, the critical settings in order to use both incoming and outgoing commskit mail servers are as follows:
Incoming mail server (pop3): pop.commskit.org.uk
Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.commskit.org.uk
Increasingly, some providers are adding restriction to what types of email can be sent through their servers. BT, for example, now operate a system whereby BTConnect users must advise BT of any domain-based email that they wish to operate through BT SMTP servers. This is an anti-spam measure.
If your supplier does operate such a restriction, you may find that, having configured your software correctly, you receive an error along the lines of '550 Relaying prohibited' when you attempt to send email. In this case, you will need either to ask your supplier to allow relaying (which may require you to prove your entitlement to use your domain), or otherwise use the Commskit SMTP server, as above.
As for webmail above, the setting known as 'Username' in Outlook and Outlook Express is of the form commskitusername-hostname. So, for the email address support@commskit.org.uk, the setting to use will be commskit-support.
The most recent versions of Outlook allow you to test your settings as you configure them. If you receive any failures, carefully check the username and server settings.
FTP server timeouts.
Note that on occasions when the FTP server is very busy, there may be delays in files being transferred, or possibly timeouts. These tend to be rare, and do not indicate that the server has failed.
Some users have found that they need to tick the 'Passive transfers' box under the 'Advanced' tab for reliable operation. This may well be the case if you are using a firewall or are on a network. In the more common 'Active transfer' mode, the FTP server initiates the connection, but a firewall may interpret this as a hacker attack and block it. Try passive transfers if you cannot successfully connect to the FTP server. The Microsoft knowledge base provides a detailed discussion on FTP passive transfer mode at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q189/2/62.asp&NoWebContent=1
Updates not appearing.
A few users have been concerned to note that after an apparently successful FTP session, the updates to their pages have not appeared online for some hours. In every case, this has been solved with one or other of the following simple actions.
If the page you are updating is already open in your browser, press F5 on your keyboard to 'refresh' the page. This forces the browser to re-download the page data. Any updates should then appear.
Empty your browser's offline cache ( via Tools - Internet options, in MS Explorer) to ensure that the browser seeks the web page directly and not from pre-stored versions.
If the pages still do not update, then it is almost certain that you are viewing the web pages via your internet service access supplier's proxy server. A proxy server is run by many internet service providers to reduce demand on their main servers when internet users try to access web pages. The proxy downloads frequently used pages and sections of sites that it anticipates that you may wish to view and then delivers them to you on demand. This generally works well, but it means that when you view a site, you could be seeing not the 'direct' site files, but those acquired by the proxy server. If the proxy server does not update quickly, your changes, although present on the site, will not be shown immediately.
Simply press CTRL and F5 to force your browser to acquire the page data directly from the site server rather than from the proxy or the in-built browser cache.
ASP
ASP, or Active Server Pages, is Microsoft's solution for making web sites more interactive, and provides functionality such as passworded pages, guestbooks, noticeboards, form to mail and database operation.
There are many sources of ASP scripts online. A particularly useful reference point is www.webwizguide.info. Many Webwiz scripts are in use on our servers and most require only minor editing or modification to operate.
Databases
Our servers are fully ASP 5 and ASP Net compliant. DSN less connections for databases are required, and ODBC connections are not supported.
The directory named /private, on the same level as the default /www directory in your web space, has special read/write permissions set to allow interrogation of databases. All databases should be lodged here.
The following reproduces the instructions on databases in the help pages:
Microsoft Access Databases can be placed on our Windows 2003 servers for use with your ASP and ASP.NET pages.
Uploading Your Database
You should upload your database file created with Microsoft Access to the
/private directory within your web space, your database file should have the
extension .mdb. Uploading your database to the /private folder allows your
scripts to access the data within it without allowing internet users to download
your entire database file.
Connecting To Your Database
You should connect to your access database using a DSN less connection. You
might use code such as the following:
Set Conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
conString = "DBQ=D:\j\o\joebloggs\private\database.mdb"
Conn.Open "DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};" & conString
Where D:\j\o\joebloggs is the path to your home directory which can be obtained
from the File System support documentation and your database file is named
database.mdb and resides in the private folder within your account.
DSN less connections are faster and more efficient than ODBC connections
since they avoid the need for a registry lookup, for this reason, ODBC connections
for Access databases are not supported.
There are many sources of ASP scripts online. A particularly useful reference point is www.webwizguide.info. Many Webwiz scripts are in use on our servers and most require only minor editing or modification to operate.