Welcome!

Greetings, Web Site Panel user! You are seeing this page because Helicon Ape is not installed on your server, but here you will find instructions how to get it for your web site anyway.

Helicon Ape provides support for Apache .htacces and .htpasswd configuration files in Microsoft IIS. It literally implements Apache configuration model and nearly all Apache modules in a single IIS add-on, not only making IIS compatible with Apache, but also extending it’s functionality by a number of highly essential features. Includes following modules: mod_rewrite, mod_proxy, mod_auth, mod_gzip, mod_headers, mod_cache, mod_expires, mod_replace and others. You can check all currently available modules in the compatibility chart (the list is growing with new builds).

Please follow these steps to install Helicon Ape on your web site.

  1. Download Helicon Ape to your local machine. Not to the hosting!

Install it locally specifying «Manual package» in the Installation type dialog. This will unpack required files to selected folder.

Open Helicon Ape installation folder (e.g. "C:\Program Files\Helicon\Ape\ManualInstall").

Open target site via FTP and go to wwwroot folder.

Copy all content of ManualInstall folder into wwwroot (preserving folder structure). "All" includes:

  • - Bin\Helicon.Ape.dll – the module itself;
  • - Helicon\httpd.conf – server configuration file;
  • - .htaccess – distributed config example;
  • - example_web.config
  • – Helicon Ape registration for the site;

If there's no web.config in the root of the site, rename example_web.config into web.config. If web.config is already there, add the following lines into <system.webServer> section: 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
        ...
        <system.webServer>
                ...
                <modules>
                  <add name="Ape" type="Helicon.Ape.ApeModule" />
                </modules>
                <handlers>
                  <add name="Ape" path="*.apeproxy" verb="*" type="Helicon.Ape.Mod.ProxyHandler"
                  resourceType="Unspecified" preCondition="integratedMode" />
                </handlers>
                ...
        </system.webServer>
        ...
</configuration>

Temporary registration key may be required to run Helicon Ape in trial mode. Please navigate to this link and fill the form to request one. Follow instructions in received e-mail and add the received key at the top of wwwroot\Helicon\httpd.conf file and save changes:

RegistrationName= Name
RegistrationCode= XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

To test if Helicon Ape is working open wwwroot\.htaccess and put the following lines at the bottom to check operability:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule /ape – [G]

Make any request to /ape page on your web site and you are likely to get the following result

  2. Which means that Helicon Ape is working!

Remove these test lines from .htaccess to return your site back to normal.

Possible issues

There may be issues with your distributed configuration. .htaccess files may be used by other applications on this server (such as ISAPI_Rewrite, IISPassword, etc) and it's not that handy to create them in Windows Explorer. Luckily you are empowered to change the default config name using AccessFileName directive in the httpd.conf file: 

AccessFileName Ape.ini

Sometimes hosting configures the site to work in Classic pipeline mode. Ape can work in such environment (see how to configure wildcard mapping) but it's better to ask your hosting to switch the pool to Integrated mode if possible.

It may happen that hosting has set too low .Net Trust Level for the site. This may affect Helicon Ape operation.

Full down to Medium level is sufficient for Ape to work a treat. Lower level may cause substantial limitations.

 

Good luck and best wishes, Helicon Tech Team