Frequently Answered Questions
This location provide answers to frequently asked questions about the Interaction application. Please always check whether you can find the answer here before you send any email for support, as this allows me to focus on development and other issues as well as to answer better those that have less common questions.
What is the reason Interaction asks the local webserver for robots.txt every five minutes?
Interaction itself does not do this. However, the optional
Watcher component for Interaction probes the web server every few minutes to check whether the connection and the server is OK (if not, it will optionally restart the computer). This behavior can be configured from the Watcher dialog of the Windows menu, which will be available if this component is installed.
Links in pages provided by Interaction leads nowhere, and gives an error?
Check that the links are correct!
If the server is configured with Interaction as preprocessor, it might be due to eventual Virtual Host ("multihoming") software such as Welcome or ClearlyHome. Depending on configuration, these applications will add a slash "/" to the end of URLs or in other ways modify the URLs, causing Interaction not to find the location. The solution is to reconfigure the virtual host software so that it doesn't add a slash when a URL has no suffix. Alternatively use the Virtual Hosting component of Interaction instead.
How can I access dialogs that goes outside the monitor of my computer?
Some computers, such as the SE/30, has a screen that are too small for some of Interaction's dialog. Use the Virtual Desktop application from AWOL Software to access the parts of the dialogs that go outside the screen.
Why does the browser contact some other website each time somebody visit the forum?
The default images that are used for the navigation buttons are kept on that site. You are advised to copy the icons to your own site or a mirror site.
How do I use my own navigation icons for the forums?
The default navigation icons of the forums of Interaction is kept on a central site on the web to make it easier to install the application. You are very welcome and encouraged to copy these to your own site or to create your own navigation buttons.
There is a dialog for each forum where you can specify the URLs of your own icons, as well as change other characteristics of the navigation bar. Here is how to get to the dialog:
Open the Forums dialog of the Services menu.
Select the forum that you want to configure with new icon URLs.
Click the More button to see all options.
Follow the link labeled Navigation to get to the dialog where the icons are configured.
How do I simplify the URLs by getting rid of the "/Interaction$"?
The URL can be made less cryptic by configuring the server with Interaction as preprocessor, or by making it have a suffix-map for Interaction. This is usually preferable compared to have Interaction as "ACGI" which require the longer URL. As a preprocessor any location of your site can be served through Interaction to benefit from the dynamic features of the application.
The "Getting Started" chapter in the documentation that come with the Interaction distribution describes the procedures to configure the server in optimal ways.
A link doesn't work, probably due to the "?id=123456" that are automatically added to the URL. How can I get around it?
Interaction automatically add an unique visitor id to all links to be able to track the visitors as they move from page to page. Without this id, tracking will not work consistently, or not at all in the case of browsers that doesn't support cookies.
A few non-mac web servers fails when a link to them contains a visitor id. In these rare instances, you can specify that a particular link should not be processed, so no id will be added to its URL. This is accomplished by enclosing the anchor in an XML Marked Section:
Server that fails ]]>
When we configured the server with Interaction as preprocessor, our homepage was substituted with the one served by Interaction. What's up?
Interaction automatically provides a homepage so you can benefit from the dynamic capabilities of Interaction also for this prominent page of your site. The homepage of Interaction is available directly from the File menu of the application, to give you quick access to this important page. Simply paste in the previous homepage in this dialog and it will be served by Interaction.
If you don't want to let Interaction provide your homepage, simply make it inaccessible. This is done by going to the Locations dialog of the File menu of Interaction. select the location called "index", then choose "Not Accessible" in the pop-up menu for restriction. This will make the web server responsible for providing the homepage.
How do I log in as a Webmaster?
Logging in as webmaster gives you access privileges required to for example use remote editing. Here is how to make yourself a webmaster:
Open the members dialog from the Windows menu.
Add yourself as a member to the list.
Click the Join button and add yourself to the group WEBMASTER.
Close the members dialog. Go to the Locations dialog of the File menu.
Make a new location called for example "admin". Set its access restriction to be WEBMASTER.
Close the dialog. Use a browser to access the location "admin". Provide your username and password when requested.
For any subsequent location, you are now a meber of the group webmaster and will have access to all resources that Interaction give to webmasters.
How do I access the Quid Pro Quo admin plug-in when Interaction is preprocessor/Action?
It turns out that using URLs such as "http://www.mysite.com/.admin" with Quid Pro Quo doesn't give access to the admin plug-in, but instead gives the Interaction homepage. The solution is to add an extra bogus item to the path of the url, e.g. "http://www.mysite.com/bogusname/.admin".
When submitting a form, the server fails to return a page?
The first thing to do is to check that the ACTION of the form has a correct URL.
Some multihoming extensions to the web server (e.g. ClearlyHome) may change the URL in a submitted form in ways that confuses the server. A frequent problem is that the name of the location is repeated in the end of the URL (e.g. "www.mysite.com/chat/room1/room1"). To compensate for this, configure the multihoming extension so that it doesn't add a slash. Alternatively, change the ACTION of the form so that it has an absolute URL (e.g. "/chat/room1") instead of just "room1".
When submitting a form, the submitted information is lost?
Make sure that the form is submitted to a location served by Interaction, and that this location is expected to do something with data submitted from a form (e.g. a chat room).
Some multihoming extensions to the web server (e.g. ClearlyHome) may attempt to redirect a submitted form after adding a slash to the end of the URL. Unfortunately, during the redirection, the submitted data might get lost. The fix is to configure the multihoming extension so that it doesn't add a slash. Alternatively (this is an ugly work-around!) add a mock suffix to the ACTION of the form (e.g. a '.' in the end of the URL, such as ACTION="/chat/room1." instead of ACTION="/chat/room1").
If your question aren't answered above, feel free to send an email to
Support@in-progress.com
and I will do my best to provide an answer. Bugs should be reported to
bugs@in-progress.com. Please include which version of Interaction you are using when reporting what seems to be a bug or malfunction.
This site is enhanced with Interaction.