REST API on IIS 2019 – 405 method not allowed

Like many – we’ve had issues with a REST API running on IIS – this was a WordPress site.

Background
We’re doing some development work for a customer who wants to add a shop to his WordPress site. This development included a product and price data feed from a 3rd Party.

We put together a test site – basic WordPress, basic WooCommerce on a clean Linux build on our internal development network to prepare a proof of concept environment – which worked really well.

Later in the development process we needed to demo this to the client, but needed their WordPress site framework around what we’d done. As we are a Microsoft Windows shop, our internet facing servers are Windows 2019 with IIS. We run WordPress sites on this server already – so know it works, but none of them use a REST API for anything.

So, we grab an image of their existing WordPress site, give it a few tweaks to not interfere with the existing site, and add a GoGetSSL 3-month SSL Certificate (REST API needs to run over SSL).

A couple of DNS entries later and we are able to load products, categories, images etc., via the REST API into the copy of their site. This process uses the API GET and POST commands.

We also needed to modify some products once they were uploaded, to add some Advanced Custom Fields data – some extended product data that is not part of the default WooCommerce product info.

This is where we hit our snag – although this method is tested and still works with our proof of concept, it didn’t work with the demo site.

The only difference (that I could see) was this is IIS on Windows, not Apache2 or Linux. So a trawl of the web for 405 – method not allowed on IIS showed loads of posts saying delete the references/disable WEBDAV.

The catch is, WEBDAV is not installed on this server, so all these “solutions” which say the cause is WEBDAV made no difference.

Solution
After some head scratching we looked at the IIS Handler Mappings for this site – specifically for PHP.

WordPress is exclusively PHP-based, this won’t work if your REST API is written in ASP.NET.

We added Handler Mappings for PHP to handle the Verbs “PUT” and “DELETE” which were not present.

Restart the site, and hey presto, the API now works the same as the Proof of Concept site!

SBS2011 to Windows Server 2019

At the beginning of February 2020, we migrated a customer from Windows Small Business Server 2011 to Windows Server 2019 and Exchange 2019 on an HPE ML350 Server using Hyper-V to create 2 virtual machines.

I checked in with the customer today – very happy – everything working as expected, and much faster than it was.

This customer is a heavy user of multiple Sage Line 50 products, as they are an accountancy practice. The migration was performed during working hours, with little or no disruption to normal business activity.

Another satisfied customer!

Windows 10 Mail and GMAIL

Had a laptop through the doors this morning which was having issues connecting Windows 10 Mail to a GMail account.

Windows 10 Mail could collect mail using IMAP, but could not send mail. Then it could not receive mail or send mail.

Checking the firewall showed that it was set correctly and outbound connections were not blocked. The Gmail account settings were checked -they were OK too. Microsoft forums showed that it *should* work, because the settings were correct, but many people confirmed that it wasn’t working.

I enabled “Allow unsecure apps” in Gmail’s settings on the web, and all was fine. Given that Mail was using SSL, and port 465 to send mail, I can only assume that it’s not using a strong enough cypher for Google to see it as a secure app.

Anyway, customer happy, and amazed how quickly it was sorted – 2 other people had already taken a look at it!

Server 2008 and Windows 7 retired

We’ve just finished a large project helping migrate a large corporate customer from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows server 2019 and from Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Microsoft Exchange 2019.

Microsoft have stopped issuing updates for all these products, and as such, continuing to use them is a great risk to your business, especially if you process customer data, customer personal details, or take electronic payments.

Talk to us today about migrating to Server 2019 and Exchange 2016, or Exchange 2019.

Keeping our customers online

I was talking to a customer today about disaster recovery options. It seems a competitor was offline for 2 days recently because of a computer issue, and we discussed what we would do in the same situation, and how long it would take to get back online…

After a short uber techy brainstorming session, and a little configuration, we now reckon that a server failure would take the company out for… 15 minutes!

Needless to say, CSIP Computing Limited is still top of their “Preferred supplier” list

Outlook 2003 and IE11

We’ve had a few issues with a client with an older version of Office recently, and it boils down to an incompatibility with Internet Explorer 11 and Outlook 2003.

What seems to be happening is that autosave is making regular copies of an email as it is being composed, and then, when send is clicked, it sends the latest saved draft rather than the finished article.

This affects Windows 7 64-bit and Internet Explorer 11 systems.

So far the fix has been to roll-back to Internet Explorer 10.

Here’s some more information:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/e4995741-42b2-4136-b9e6-cf546fc7dd36/outlook-2003-suddenly-cutting-off-email-text-after-send?forum=w7itprogeneral

Are your passwords secure?

We all know we should use secure passwords, but just HOW secure is your password?

Is it at least 8 characters long? Does it contain numbers, letters, capitals and special characters? How long would it take to crack?

You can test your password here: https://howsecureismypassword.net/

I use a password algorithm which currently results in results such as “It would take a desktop PC 58 years to crack your password”.  Good enough?  Maybe?

This site generates 64-character long complex passwords: https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

The results: It would take a desktop PC about 605 quattuortrigintillion  years to crack your password (however long that is!!!)

In summary: the longer and more complex your password is, the better.  If you want some advice on how to generate an easily memorable, yet fairly complex password, get in touch. It’s quite simple, and highly effective to generate an easy-to-remember password which is different for each web site you visit.  Ask us how!

Graphics Designers Take Note!

Holy Pixels Batman! Have just supplied and installed a Dell U2713HM monitor, Quadro K2000 Graphics card, and additional 16GB of RAM to Snapped By Shell Photography to allow high-resolution and colour-accurate photo editing (on the high-spec desktop I supplied last year).

The resolution of the screen is 2560×1440 pixels… That’s a bucket-load of pixels.  I’d have killed for that sort of resolution when I was doing Graphic Design work!

I would HIGHLY recommend this setup to anyone needing decent screen resolutions for graphics or photo work.

Now accepting card payments

We’re happy to announce that we can now take card payments for our products and services. We’re not imposing a surcharge for card payments, and as it is a fully mobile solution, we can take payments anywhere – even in the middle of a field!

cardpayment

Windows 8.1 Review

I’ve been playing with the Windows 8.1 Preview (i.e. Pre-release software), and I’ve got to say I’m still massively disappointed. Agreed, we now have a start button, but all it does is get you back to the metro screen if you left-click it, and if you right click it, you get various options for configuration – a help I agree – but no list of installed programs.

Boot into desktop is an interesting – and quite deeply hidden – option, and works as expected, however booting to a desktop which contains nothing is no real improvement for your standard user – and I’m thinking about the 90%+ of my customers who are used to Windows XP and Windows 7, and are looking for the next version of Windows to offer a reason to upgrade.

A blank look

So, what should I install on this Windows 8.1 Preview – I’ll install Office 2013 Professional Plus (from my Microsoft Action Pack).  I’m sure 100% of my customers will want this installing and all of them will expect to find it on their start menus, or via an icon on the desktop.

The installation went very smoothly, and using the custom installation, I chose what I wanted installing, and where I wanted it installing (i.e. which folder). What do you think happened next? NOTHING!!!

Hide and Seek

Imagine I’m an end user, and I’ve just spent £300+ on a shiny new Office 2013 disk, installed it on my new Windows 8.1 Pro laptop, look at the desktop and find nothing relating to Office.  Silly me, I forgot, Programs install themselves as tiles on the new Start Screen (Metro interface).  A quick click of the start button, and I’m whizzed to the Start Screen with all those lovely til… hang on, no office icons here either???

ARE MICROSOFT SERIOUS?

This is not the end-user experience that *I* think people are looking for.  A game of hide and seek to try and find my software.  I didn’t do anything unusual, didn’t deliberately choose any obscure settings whilst installing Office 2013, yet sure enough, there is no *obvious* trace of Office 2013 having been installed on the system.

As an IT Professional with over 25 years experience of IT systems, I know – because I’ve researched –  that I simply start typing on the Start Screen and a list of matching programs will be displayed- or I can click the downward pointing arrow, and then scroll to the right to find the icons for the various programs –  at which point I can Pin to the Start Screen, or Pin to the Taskbar therefore making my Office 2013 programs easily accessible.  Hang on – I thought the new Windows 8.1 interface was supposed to make thing easier!

Has anyone thought of the guesswork that now has to go on?  Suppose I’ve just installed Sage Taxation Suite Client – What the heck do I type to get that to show up?  Is it sage?  Is it Taxation?

Sorry guys, but for normal business users, and home users who want an easy-to-use familiar environment, I will continue to source and supply PCs and Laptops with Windows 7 Pro installed as the operating system.

What a mess!