IIS Backup Utility: Features

The Coolness Layer is an ISAPI filter that redirects incoming URLs that appear to be static to dynamic requests that follow the WebHub convention of domain/path/runner?appid:pageid:session:command. This enables you to use and advertise short "Cool URLs" instead of the standard long URLs.

Incoming URL:	Mapped by Coolness Layer to:
www.href.com/coolness	www.href.com/scripts/runisa.dll?hrefsite:coolness
demos.href.com/htem/pgcover	demos.href.com/scripts/runisa.dll?htem:pgcover

Version 2.0 of the Coolness Layer supports multi-homing and some cool new features to make light work out of configuring and customizing ISAPI for your WebHub site. Like earlier versions, Coolness 2.0 enables you to use short URLs to advertise your site to end-users and search engines and to publish links to your dynamic pages without the '?' symbol, to maximize the reach of search engines and spiders. The new features in Coolness 2.0 let you

• host multiple virtual domains from one physical server
• configure aliases for any virtual domain
• configure settings through a friendly user interface panel featuring a test pad for running sample "cool" URLs through your configuration before saving
• integrate your dynamic WebHub pages with your existing static pages seamlessly
• redirect ("bounce") HTTP calls to a different server
• control the format of output URLs to the "nth degree" of granularity - from global to single page
• let surfers access your domains by URL or IP number
• switch non-IIS pages to IIS via simple, generic runner settings that won't compromise CGI scripts you want to keep
• save, restore and refresh runner settings in the Windows Registry

Version 2.2 of the Coolness Layer provides an extra feature for surfers with Netscape 6. That web browser translates colons in URLs to %3A. The Coolness Layer v2.2 translates %3A back to : so that WebHub sites continue to work normally.

Installation

The installation program for the newest version of Coolness does "basic" configuration and installs coolcfg.exe so that it appears as an icon in your server's Windows NT Control Panel. In the WebHub Developer's Manual are step-by-step instructions and a discussion of what's needed in your app to get it working with Coolness.

The Coolness Configuration Panel

Running coolcfg.exe presents an easy-to-follow tabbed dialog where you can add or edit the configurations for your virtual servers. These are some of the main tasks you can do here:

Task	Details
Multi-homing	Create hosts that IIS will recognize as distinct domains and that the Coolness Layer will filter; also optionally create one or more aliases for any of those domains.
Define Default WebApp for Each Server	Identify the default AppID for any host, if it has not already been identified or if you need to change it. This is the setting to be used when URLs come in without an explicit AppID.
Override the Default Runner	Override the default runner for any AppID - useful if your site is being ported to IIS from CGI or you have renamed the ISAPI runner for some reason.
Specify Paths or Files that Coolness is to Bypass	Identify any paths, including virtual directories, that you don't want Coolness to change, e.g. /pub or /image. You can do this for whole branches of your directory tree or use path-level mappings to go right down to the level of an individual file, if you need to.
Set Rules for Translating URLs	Enter template strings that tell Coolness what to look for in the content of an incoming URL and how to expand it to a WebHub URL. The new features include wildcards and format strings to make the whole technique flexible and easy to implement. You can even define "conditional" templates that will produce a certain output provided some stipulated element does not have an empty value. Examples of path mappings You have a URL like "www.myhost.com/counters/ancient.gif" to display the number of visits to your site, with the GIF file controlling the appearance of the digits. You could map this as: /counters/*~)r?MY_COUNTER_APP:GET_COUNTER_GIF:%s:%t Coolness will output "/scripts/runisa.dll?MY_COUNTER_APP:GET_COUNTER_GIF::ancient.gif&q uot; You want to make WebHub branding to be applied to any static file in the 'documents' directory: /documents/*~)r?%a:BRAND:%s:%t Your want all URLs referring to the directory "/foreign" to be redirected to another server: /foreign/*=http://www.other.com/%t Your home page is static and you want its URL left unchanged but to have Coolness applied to all other pages: /index.htm=/index.htm (or /=/index.htm) /^
Switch Specified Runner Names to the Default Runner	If you are porting your Web site to IIS from a different Web server (which used CGI or WinCGI), but you still want the old-style URLs to be valid, you can configure Coolness to recognize certain ".exe" files (such as Webhub CGI runners) as runners and hand them over to the ISAPI runner. The latest Coolness is safe to use on sites running non-WebHub scripts because it won't touch an executable unless it knows it is a WebHub runner.
Test Your New Mappings Before Updating Registry	The Coolness configuration panel has a testing feature which is useful when you have defined some path-level mappings and want to make sure the URLs are expanded correctly. You simply select the domain you want to test, type or paste in the path you want to test and click the Expand! Button. The expanded URL appears in an Output window.
Easy Registry Updating	The Windows Registry keys for the multi-homing configurations are compatible with the keys for earlier Coolness versions. These keys no longer need to be edited with regedt32.exe - whenever you add to, edit or delete something in your Coolness configuration, pressing OK will hold your changes in memory until you are ready to click a button which will update the registry and re-load the new settings. You can also use the program's backup feature to save a .reg file of the current settings before and/or after saving new settings.
Own Help File	The configuration utility has its own detailed Help file.