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IIS Where are my log files?

This is one of those things that once you know is very very simple, but finding out can be very very annoying.

IIS by default will store a log file for each site that it runs. This gives you valuable details on each request to the site that can help when errors are being reported by users.

When you go searching for them your initial thought may be to go to IIS and look at the site you want the files for. There you will see an item called logging. Excellent you think, this will tell you all you need to know.

There's even a button saying "View Log File...", but once you click it you realise things aren't so simple. The link and folder path on the logging page both take you to a folder, containing more folders. In those folders are the logs, but there's a folder for each site in IIS and they've all got a weird name. How do you know which folder has the log files for the site you want?

Back on the IIS logging screen there's nothing to say which folder the files will be in. There isn't any indication anywhere.

The answer however is very easy. Each folder has the Site ID in its name. You can find the Site ID for your site in IIS either by looking at the sites list

or clicking on a site and clicking advanced settings

Creating 301 redirects in web.config

For various reasons at times you may need to create a 301 redirect to another URL. This could be as a result of a page moving or you just need to create some friendly URLS.

As a developer you may be tempted to do something like this in code...

1private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
2{
3    Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
4    Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.new-url.com");
5}

But do you really want your project cluttered up with files who's only purpose is to redirect to another page!

You may also be tempted to try doing something with .NET's RouteCollection. This would certainly solve an issue on creating a redirect for anything without a file extension, but there is a better way.

In your web.config file under the configuration node create something like this

1<location path="twitter">
2  <system.webServer>
3    <httpRedirect enabled="true" destination="http://twitter.com/TwitterName" httpResponseStatus="Permanent" />
4  </system.webServer>
5</location>

The location path specifies that path on your site that this redirect will apply to. The destination value in the httpRedirect is where the redirect will go to. As well as setting Permanent for the httpResponseStatus you can also specify Found or Temporary depending on your needs.

Windows Phone: Sharing Content

If you writing an app and want to add some social sharing capabilities like posting link to Facebook or twitter. Your initial approach may be to go to and check out each of their api’s or to go to codeplex and search for a C# api someone’s written that makes the integration simpler. But right from that start Windows Phone has had a much simpler way of doing things.

The ShareLinkTask provides a simple way to post messages to any social network the user has registered on their phone. You don’t need to do anything with authorising your app with facebook etc which not only makes things easier for you, but your users are also pleased as they don’t have to worry about what you may be doing with their passwords.

It also only takes 4 lines of code. Simply create an instance of the ShareLinkTask, set the tile and message and call the show function:

1ShareLinkTask shareLinkTask = new ShareLinkTask();
2shareLinkTask.LinkUri = new Uri("http://www.himynameistim.com");
3shareLinkTask.Message = "Check out this great blog";
4shareLinkTask.Show();

As well as the ShareLinkTask there is also a ShareStatusTask and ShareMediaTask that can be used if you just want to post a status update or post and image.

1ShareStatusTask shareStatusTask = new ShareStatusTask();
2shareStatusTask.Status = "I'm developing a Windows Phone application!";
3shareStatusTask.Show();
4

5ShareMediaTask shareMediaTask = new ShareMediaTask();
6shareMediaTask.FilePath = path;
7shareMediaTask.Show();

Social media isn’t the only way of sharing content on a phone though, there is also email and sms. Both of these are just as easy to do as social media though:

For email use the EmailComposeTask

1EmailComposeTask emailComposeTask = new EmailComposeTask();
2emailComposeTask.Subject = "Awesome website";
3emailComposeTask.Body = "Foo bla bla";
4emailComposeTask.Show();

And for SMS use the SmsComposeTask

1SmsComposeTask smsComposeTask = new SmsComposeTask();
2 
3smsComposeTask.To = "2065550123";
4smsComposeTask.Body = "Try this new application. It's great!";
5 
6smsComposeTask.Show();

For more information have a look at the MSDN documentation:

Share Link Task - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/hh394009(v=vs.105).aspx

Share Status Task - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/hh394027(v=vs.105).aspx

Share Media Task - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj207027(v=vs.105).aspx

Email Componse Task - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/hh394003(v=vs.105).aspx

SMS Compose Task - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/hh394005(v=vs.105).aspx

Windows Phone: Rate My App

If you want your app to succeed one thing you need is reviews. More importantly you need good reviews!

Stats show that if an app has a rating of 4 stars or above it will do significantly better than an app with less. The higher the number of reviews, the more believable that rating is.

One issue you may have though is how to get reviews. Sadly most users don't rate apps unless they really like it or hate it. The Windows Phone OS also does nothing to prompt people to rate apps, so if you want to build up reviews then your going to need to do the prompting yourself.

The code to direct someone to the review page in the store for your app is quite simple. But even better is the fact Nokia have produced sample code that does the whole process!

Once you've integrated the code on the 5th launch of your app the user will see a prompt asking them to rate your app. If they choose not to then they will be prompted to send you feedback via email.

If they didn't rate your app then on the 10th launch they will be prompted again.

Now getting good reviews is slightly harder, for that your actually going to have to build a good app that people like.

You can download the Rate My App code from Nokia here.