tips and tricks

This is the standard home page of a Web Site Factory application generated by Code OnTime Generator. You can quickly add a custom background to this or any other page with a custom CSS stylesheet.

Open your project in Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer and create a new CSS style sheet in the same ~/App_Themes folder of your project that contains the _Layout.skin file.

Type the following CSS rules in the style sheet:

.pages_home_aspx  #PageContent
{
   background-image: url(../_Shared/SettingsGraphic.jpg); 
   background-repeat: repeat-x; 
}

The rule will change the home page content area to display the standard SettingsGraphics.jpg image as the background image across the top of the page.

We have copied the standard Windows Vista background wallpaper 26.jpg to the folder with our CSS file and changed the CSS rule to

.pages_home_aspx  #PageContent
{
   background-image: url(img26.jpg); 
   background-repeat: repeat-x; 
}

The home page of the app has changed as shown in the picture.

The CSS class pages_home_aspx is automatically assigned to the home page by the application framework. In fact, every page of a Web Site Factory application automatically assigns its own class name to the content container element. This allows creating CSS rules with precise targeting of individual pages.

The styling of all pages in the generated web applications is controlled entirely by a collection of CSS stylesheets that make your application look like Microsoft SharePoint Services web site by default.

Disable the stylesheet and it turns into a “black and white” canvas.

If you feel an inspiration then go ahead and create your own masterpiece!

Q. I have another question. I just implemented ELMAH into my solution and
am having some difficulty because every time I use the designer and
regenerate the solution the Elmah configuration entries get
overwritten in Web.Config. I'm sure others have run into this before.
How would you suggest I remediate this issue?

Arthur Djavairian

A. You can configure the project to execute custom Web.Config modification instructions as described at /blog/2010/03/customizing-webconfig.html.

ELMAH (Error Logging Modules and Handlers) is an application-wide error logging facility that is completely pluggable. It can be dynamically added to a running ASP.NET web application, or even all ASP.NET web applications on a machine, without any need for re-compilation or re-deployment.

Arthur has shared with us his configuration settings.

The following is the markup to add ELMAH error logging to a Code OnTime project.  Make sure to copy the instructions including the text in bold.

AppendChild: /configuration/configSections

              <sectionGroup name="elmah">
                       <!-- NOTE! If you are using ASP.NET 1.x then remove the
                requirePermission="false" attribute from the section
                elements below as those are only needed for
                partially trusted applications in ASP.NET 2.0 -->
                       <section name="security" requirePermission="false" type="Elmah.SecuritySectionHandler, Elmah"/>
                       <section name="errorLog" requirePermission="false" type="Elmah.ErrorLogSectionHandler, Elmah"/>
                       <section name="errorMail" requirePermission="false" type="Elmah.ErrorMailSectionHandler, Elmah"/>
                       <section name="errorFilter" requirePermission="false" type="Elmah.ErrorFilterSectionHandler, Elmah"/>
                       <section name="errorTweet" requirePermission="false" type="Elmah.ErrorTweetSectionHandler, Elmah"/>
               </sectionGroup>

InsertAfter: /configuration/connectionStrings

       <elmah>
               <security allowRemoteAccess="1"/>
               <!--
           Use to log errors to Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or 2005
           using ASP.NET 2.0. Set value of connectionStringName attribute
           to the name of the connection string settings to use from
           the <connectionStrings> section.
       -->
               <errorLog type="Elmah.SqlErrorLog, Elmah" connectionStringName="SimplePaymentPlans"/>
       </elmah>

AppendChild: /configuration/system.web/httpHandlers

<add verb="POST,GET,HEAD" path="elmah.axd" type="Elmah.ErrorLogPageFactory, Elmah"/>

AppendChild: /configuration/system.web/httpModules

<add name="ErrorLog" type="Elmah.ErrorLogModule, Elmah"/>

AppendChild: /configuration

   <location path="elmah.axd">
       <system.web>
           <authorization>
               <allow roles="Administrators"/>
               <deny users="*" />
           </authorization>
       </system.web>
   </location>