QuickerSite

Sometimes I get asked whether it is possible to have more user friendly URLs for QuickerSite. It's true that urls like http://www.quickersite.com/r/default.asp?iId=FKJKFG are pretty difficult to write down without typos.

It would be very nice indeed to have urls like www.quickersite.com/download or www.quickersite.com/contact to refer your visitors to! Well, you can with QS v176!

As from QS v176, it's possible to enable user friendly urls. The following guidelines will however need your attention to install this feature correctly. In fact, you need to be able to define a custom 404 error page in IIS for your QuickerSite. If you manage your server yourself, that will not be a problem. Hosting solutions however do not always offer the possibility to define a custom error page! Free and (very) low budget solutions probably never will...

1. First, make sure you have enabled user friendly urls in the /admin section of QuickerSite. Since the feature requires a setting in IIS, I moved the control of this feature to the admin-section. Open an account, and check the appropriate box!
    
2. Next, you have to set the custom 404 error page to the URL: "/default.asp" (do not skip the first slash!), like in the figure below:
   
   
   
   Be careful, if you host multiple QuickerSites in 1 codebase, you should include the QuickerSite directory here (C_DIRECTORY_QUICKERSITE in asp/config/web_config.asp). In case of this website, the custom 404 error page is "/r/default.asp", since this website is hosted with other sites on the same code/database.
    
3. You can define a friendly url for pages in the backsite. The userfriendly url of this page is http://www.quickersite.com/ufl, where the ufl is in fact not user friendly at all... it stands for user friendly link... The userfriendly link http://www.quickersite.com/support is more obvious. 
    
4. What really happens: the urls above raise 404 errors in IIS. This 404-error is passed to the script /default.asp as a server variable (Request.ServerVariables-collection). QuickerSite retrieves the requested page there...