ASP Page not reading Form POST information

[TimJeff]

I am a GoDaddy customer and I'm incredibly frustrated with the Plesk platform. GoDaddy no longer offers its former Windows hosting platform, which I had finally learned to use. With Plesk I am very much lost again.

My current problem has to do with an incredibly simple ASP page that simply writes out the values it receives from another HTML file with a form on it. The form posts 3 values and the ASP page is supposed to write them out. This file WORKS on my old Godaddy Windows accounts that do not use Plesk. It works on 3 non-plesk sites. It does not work on 3 plesk sites. so the thing in common here is clearly Plesk. It seems somehow that something is stripping off POSTED header information. The ASP runs - there are no errors. It simply doesn't retrieve any values and if I ask it to write the number of Request.Form.Count items, it spits out zero.

What setting do I need to change? Or did I need to leave GoDaddy and find a host that doesn't use Plesk?

By the way, Godaddy support won't help me.

Also by the way, I'm not sure which version of Plesk Godaddy is using

Tim

 

[AliceJ]

Same problem is with my godaddy account

I am a GoDaddy customer and I'm incredibly frustrated with the Plesk platform. GoDaddy no longer offers its former Windows hosting platform, which I had finally learned to use. With Plesk I am very much lost again.

My current problem has to do with an incredibly simple ASP page that simply writes out the values it receives from another HTML file with a form on it. The form posts 3 values and the ASP page is supposed to write them out. This file WORKS on my old Godaddy Windows accounts that do not use Plesk. It works on 3 non-plesk sites. It does not work on 3 plesk sites. so the thing in common here is clearly Plesk. It seems somehow that something is stripping off POSTED header information. The ASP runs - there are no errors. It simply doesn't retrieve any values and if I ask it to write the number of Request.Form.Count items, it spits out zero.

What setting do I need to change? Or did I need to leave GoDaddy and find a host that doesn't use Plesk?

By the way, Godaddy support won't help me.

Also by the way, I'm not sure which version of Plesk Godaddy is using

Tim

I purchased this ultimate windows hosting from godaddy which comes with plesk panel and i am trying to run an MVC 4 application in which a simple post to a page with form values is not working . On the destination page Request.Form["values"] doesnot work it is empty and doesnot read any form values .

Apart this frustrating problem to top it all godaddy has removed email ticketing system for support and there is hell lot of waiting time on phone support , i couldn't get through there waiting time till now . I guess i made a mistake by investing my money in it . Shame on it .

 

[TimJeff]

Switch how Plesk handles incoming URLS

alice:

After nine hours of banging my head against a wall trying to figure this out and soliciting the paid help of another .NET developer, I finally did figure this out. It may not be your issue, but it fixed mine.

Go to your Godaddy administration.
go to WEb Hosting
Launch your particular site.
Go to Hosting Settings
Near the top of the page there's a dropdown for Preferred Domain. the default choice, "domain.tld", redirects incoming www urls to this url and the redirect strips off header information. Change the setting in the dropdown to either www.domain.tld or "none".

This solved it for me. I hope it works for you as well.

Plesk sucks. Why would anyone choose something by default that strips off POST information?

Tim

I purchased this ultimate windows hosting from godaddy which comes with plesk panel and i am trying to run an MVC 4 application in which a simple post to a page with form values is not working . On the destination page Request.Form["values"] doesnot work it is empty and doesnot read any form values .

Apart this frustrating problem to top it all godaddy has removed email ticketing system for support and there is hell lot of waiting time on phone support , i couldn't get through there waiting time till now . I guess i made a mistake by investing my money in it . Shame on it .

 

[AliceJ]

alice:

After nine hours of banging my head against a wall trying to figure this out and soliciting the paid help of another .NET developer, I finally did figure this out. It may not be your issue, but it fixed mine.

Go to your Godaddy administration.
go to WEb Hosting
Launch your particular site.
Go to Hosting Settings
Near the top of the page there's a dropdown for Preferred Domain. the default choice, "domain.tld", redirects incoming www urls to this url and the redirect strips off header information. Change the setting in the dropdown to either www.domain.tld or "none".

This solved it for me. I hope it works for you as well.

Plesk sucks. Why would anyone choose something by default that strips off POST information?

Tim

Thanks a lot Tim i really appreciate your help , i also wasted my whole day searching on internet and 1 hour call to godaddy support who were clueless about what i was talking about exactly . These plesk guys should see this post and do the needful .
Once again Thanks a lot , your solution worked like a charm .

 

[TimJeff]

OMG!!!! I actually wasn't sure if I would be able to help you. I'm so glad I did.

Yes, it would be nice if Plesk understood how AWFUL this stripping of POST information is. Non one seems to get it.

And believe me, I wrote six times to Godaddy support telling them that they should put this in their knowledge base and they kept replying that I should learn how to program or hire someone who knows what they were doing. Like it's all my fault. Unbelievable. What happened to "the customer is always right" or at least might have a valid point?

BTW, Godaddy still seems to have email support, but it's not available on their site. Somehow they contacted me!!!! It was shortly after I wrote this post, so maybe Godaddy was actually responding to my post or Plesk told them. Dunno. But in the end they acted like I was a bad programmer.

Glad to help.

Tim

 

[AliceJ]

OMG!!!! I actually wasn't sure if I would be able to help you. I'm so glad I did.

Yes, it would be nice if Plesk understood how AWFUL this stripping of POST information is. Non one seems to get it.

And believe me, I wrote six times to Godaddy support telling them that they should put this in their knowledge base and they kept replying that I should learn how to program or hire someone who knows what they were doing. Like it's all my fault. Unbelievable. What happened to "the customer is always right" or at least might have a valid point?

BTW, Godaddy still seems to have email support, but it's not available on their site. Somehow they contacted me!!!! It was shortly after I wrote this post, so maybe Godaddy was actually responding to my post or Plesk told them. Dunno. But in the end they acted like I was a bad programmer.

Glad to help.

Tim

I agree with you ! They don't want to acknowledge that they are wrong.

 

[TannerS]

Tim and Alice,

I'm sorry I didn't see this post earlier; I am a member of the GoDaddy Plesk Development team. I can understand your frustration and I appreciate your candid feedback.

I have had discussions with the Parallels Plesk Development team and the good news is that this default settings is changed with the new version of Plesk (version 12). It will now be set to "none" which will prevent the URL from transforming when you're not expecting it. For those who DO want it to change, they will still be able to change to domain.tld or www.domain.tld via the dropdown.

If there are other questions or concerns that you have, or anything I can clarify please let me know.

Thank you,
Tanner

 

[TimJeff]

Tanner:

Thanks for responding. It would have been nice if this had been addressed earlier, but I guess better late then never! You don't suppose there's a way, even if you do choose to redirect pages, that the POST information could be redirected as well? I'm not entirely sure why the post information needs to be stripped off.

Many people I've spoken with are frustrated with the Plesk setup. I also note the SQL web interface is much more limited that the old windows Control Panel.

Tim

Tim and Alice,

I'm sorry I didn't see this post earlier; I am a member of the GoDaddy Plesk Development team. I can understand your frustration and I appreciate your candid feedback.

I have had discussions with the Parallels Plesk Development team and the good news is that this default settings is changed with the new version of Plesk (version 12). It will now be set to "none" which will prevent the URL from transforming when you're not expecting it. For those who DO want it to change, they will still be able to change to domain.tld or www.domain.tld via the dropdown.

If there are other questions or concerns that you have, or anything I can clarify please let me know.

Thank you,
Tanner

 

[TannerS]

Tim,

I don't know the answer to this, but I will consult with Parallels and let you know what I find.

As for the SQL Interface inside of Plesk... I agree, it's basic and limited. But here is our thinking: Our SQL Databases with Plesk can be connected to remotely from your desktop and this wasn't always the case with our former platform; many web professionals (especially if they are using Windows) are likely to prefer a powerful tool like SQL Server 2012 Management Studio (which is free and can be downloaded from Microsoft). The built in "My Little Admin" inside of Plesk can then be used for smaller tasks on-the-go. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this

To answer one of your earlier questions: we are currently running Plesk 11.5 and are in the process of moving to the new version, so you should have v12 in the near future.

Talk soon,
Tanner

 

[TimJeff]

Tanner:

Thanks for the reply. I only have SQL Server management Studio 2008. I will try downloading 2012. however, from what I've experienced so far, I don't think you can really modify the database from Management Studio. you can only modify data. Is that your understanding? In order to modify the database, the only option seems to be T-SQL, which is difficult to work with if you're inexperienced. Another problem is see is that I could not find any place to back up my database.

 

[TannerS]

Tim,

I'm pretty sure that SSMS will perform DB edits (DB Properties); you can get a whole list of options through the right click menus in the object explorer. You can also do point and click data updates via SSMS similar to how you can do it in My Little Admin or PHPMyAdmin.

Let me know if there is a specific operation that you'd like to do with Management Studio and I'll see if I can find a way.

As for DB backups there are a couple of options when using Plesk:

1. Inside of the Plesk "Backup Manager" you'll see an icon for "Database Backup Repository". You can perform DB backups there and it creates a .bak file that you can download. Keep in mind that these are data recovery type backups... they aren't intended as a way to migrate and move DB's to another server.
2. Using Management Studio you can can also do a "backup" or you can generate a SQL Script export of your DB. Both of these options are accomplished by right clicking on your DB and selecting the "Tasks" option.

I hope this helps,
Tanner

 

[TimJeff]

Ssms

Tanner:

Thanks again for the reply. I will check all these features out.

However, I am going on vacation for a couple weeks so it will be a while before I do. But thanks again!

Tim

 

[TannerS]

No Rush, I'm sure you're busy Just let me know if I can help.

And above all, have a great vacation!

Tanner

 

[TimJeff]

Ssms

Tanner:

I tried out SSMS 2012 and you seem to be correct . I can accomplish a number of things there. I was able to make a backup but when I tried to restore I got an error saying user does not have permission. Any ideas? The backup was stored (presumably) on Godaddy Server.

================================

Restore of database 'fsedb' failed. (Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.RelationalEngineTasks)

------------------------------
Program Location:

at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.RelationalEngineTasks.RestoreDatabaseTaskFormComponent.PerformTask(ITaskExecutionContext context)
at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.RelationalEngineTasks.RestoreDatabaseTaskFormComponent.Perform(ITaskExecutionContext context)
at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.TaskForms.TaskExecutionManager.ExecuteTaskSequence(ISfcScriptCollector collector)

===================================

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlError: User does not have permission to RESTORE database 'fsedb'. (Microsoft.SqlServer.SmoExtended)

------------------------------
For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?Prod...00.60+((SQL11_RTM).120210-1917+)&LinkId=20476

------------------------------
Program Location:

at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.RestorePlan.Execute()
at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.RelationalEngineTasks.RestoreDatabaseTaskFormComponent.PerformTask(ITaskExecutionContext context)

 

[TannerS]

Tim,

That's good to hear that you're able to use SSMS for table management. As for the backups... after talking with one of our SQL Engineers, it is behaving correctly. The information I gave you last week was accurate except for one small detail (sorry). Let me clarify:

*When using SSMS, you can "Generate Scripts" to create a SQL Export of your Database. That would then be imported by running the SQL script. You cannot use the restore functionaliy (this is the misinformation I provided) through SSMS because your Plesk user does not have permissions. This is as expected. It does seem silly that the Plesk user has the ability to backup but not restore so I'll discuss with Parallels to see if this can be adjusted in anyway.
*You CAN run a backup and generate a .bak file if you use the Plesk Interface. This is accomplished as previously mentioned using the "Backup Manager > Database Backup Repository". This is the method I would advise you to use since it's inside your Plesk Control Panel. You can also download the .bak file it creates if you want to store a local copy. Again, this is intended as a way to keep backups for your database and not as means to export it to other systems. Give this a shot (when you have time) and let me know if I can help.

Thanks,
Tanner

 

[TimJeff]

Tanner:

thanks for this response. As I am relatively new to database management, perhaps my questions are naive, but here they are:

1. if a .bak file cannot be restored and it cannot be imported into another system, what purpose does it serve?
2. Since I cannot restore using SSMS nor can I restore using Plesk, what happens if I need to restore my database? Does Godaddy have a support system that will do this for me somehow?
3. Can I use SSMS to generate automatic backups daily?

Thanks.

 

[TannerS]

Sorry... my answer was a bit confusing. Let me clarify.

1. You can restore a .bak but you have to use your Plesk Control Panel because it's user has elevated permissions. You create the .bak inside the Plesk Backup Manager and you also perform restores in the same location. A .bak file is not intended as an export type backup because it contains information in it that is specific to that SQL Server. Your scenario would look something like this: 1. you create a SQL .bak backup once a week (or month, whatever) 2. At some point in the future you want to roll back to a previous backup due to data loss, SQL query that went bad, etc. 3. you access your Backup Manager in Plesk and restore your .bak file. (keep in mind, this rolls back all data to the previous backup).
2. See #1 above. You can right click on your DB and select "Tasks > Generate Scripts" inside of SSMS if you don't like doing the .bak option inside of Plesk. You could also use this option if you just want to get the data to export elsewhere or into a local database on your own PC to get specific pieces of data.
3. I don't think you can schedule backups in SSMS... looking around I don't see anything. BUT... you can schedule backups inside of the "Backup Manager" in your Plesk Control Panel See #1.

As a side note, you can download a .bak file from the Plesk Control Panel and restore it locally using SSMS if you have SQL Server Express (free) running on your local machine. This would be an alternative to the "Generate Scripts" option I mentioned in #2. This is helpful if you don't want to overwrite your live DB but you'd just like to get the data locally on your PC so you can examine it. This works (unlike restoring a .bak to your live DB) because your local machine user has full access to your local Database.

I know that's a lot to consume... does that help?

Thanks,
Tanner

 

[TimJeff]

Ssms

Tanner:

Very helpful. Thanks. Okay, so now Plesk is looking better and better. I look forward to trying all this out.

Tim

 

[TimJeff]

Plesk SQL Server ASP Tables

Tanner:

I'm back! You'd hoped you'd gotten rid of me.

I have experimented with the subjects discussed in this thread and things do seem to work as advertised. I have not tried scripting a database from SSMS, but the Plesk interface seems to work.

Now I have a somewhat related question: I seem to recall that in the old control panel, when you went to create a new SQL Server database you had the option of making it ASP.NET savvy. I don't know quite how else to describe it. In other words, if you chose this option it would automatically put in some tables that relate to how ASP.NET manages users, roles and authentication. Is this feature still there, buried somewhere in the Plesk interface?

also, I just realized I'm not done with the backup questions. Although there appears to be a location to schedule backups, those backups appear to be for the entire site. Is there not a way to schedule database backups only?


Tim Jeffryes
TJs Tools LLC

 

[TimJeff]

Tanner:

Just noticed another thing:

Most of Microsoft's ASP.NET examples show using SQLExpress for the local user mangement database. I notice that on the Plesk ASP settings page, it shows a connection string called LocalSqlServer and the string is "data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|aspnetdb.mdf;User Instance=true" Does this mean that I can use this to connect to a local database file in the DataDirectory?

Tim