We want to inform you of a new helpful feature that is available in Helicon Ape 3.0.0.32 and higher.

To make your interaction with our support team more fruitful we’ve introduced a context menu item “Zip and Save Ape Configuration” that makes an archive including all Ape config files for current location (on which you right-clicked) and its parents, web.config and Ape rewrite and error logs.

Having chosen the option you’ll be informed about the files to be included into the package.

Note! All the files taken have proven to be essential for quick/efficient problem solving in most cases.

Notice that you can append additional files to the zip package later.

Finally, you’ll be prompted to specify the location for the package to be saved (by default it’s Ape installation folder). Our support team will be really grateful to get it for investigation.

We do hope this feature will help our support team resolve your issues within the shorter term.

Best regards,
Anton, Helicon Tech Team

We’ll review each of the possible license types so you could opt for the one that best fits your needs.

To start with, there are two distinct installation packages supporting various license types:

• Full (including 45-day trial)
  • free licenses
  • per-site licenses
  • server-wide license
• Free (gratis for up to 3 sites only)
  • free licenses

1. Full version

Free licenses

Ape 3 has obtained a new license type—Free. From now on you can use Ape for up to 3 sites at no cost.
To use Ape on up to 3 sites absolutely free choose Free mode during installation.

After installation process is over, run Helicon Ape Manager and open Help -> License Manager to specify the sites for which free licenses will be used. To do that Per-site licensing policy should be selected. In the list of sites you must tick the sites (up to 3!) you want Ape to work for free for and press “Enable free license” button.

Per-site licenses

If you need more than 3 sites to use Ape, you can either buy individual per-site licenses or (if you want Ape for a bunch of sites) buy a server license (see the next sub-item).

Having bought a per-site license you just run the License Manager, and being in Per-site mode tick the site you want this license for and press “Enable License”. You’ll be offered to enter the registration data and press “Enable”. After that, assuming your credentials are correct, Ape will be enabled for the chosen site.

Server license

If you have a large number of sites to use Ape, it’s more appropriate (and economically efficient) to register Ape for entire server. This means all sites on this server will be able to use Ape when properly configured.

To register Ape on entire server select Server License mode in License Manager and enter registration credentials when prompted. Then necessarily press “Apply” button.

Note! If you want to test Ape on your entire server prior to buying it, you may select “45 Day Trial” mode during installation and enjoy it for 45 days period at no cost without functionality limitations.

Notice that License Manager is just a handy tool and licenses may also be set manually in Helicon Ape Manager by editing licenses.conf file.

To apply free Ape licenses to 3 specific sites the following directive should be written:

FreeSites id#1 id#100001456 id#789

where the numbers represent sites’ IDs in IIS.

To add a per-site license for specific site having ID=1 in IIS the following structure should be used:

<VirtualHost id#1>
  RegistrationName= Name
   RegistrationCode= Code
</VirtualHost>

The server license is enabled in a similar way but without VirtualHost tags:

RegistrationName= Name
RegistrationCode= Code

2. Free version

Alternatively to installing Helicon Ape Installation Package you may choose Helicon Ape Free Installation Package to use Ape on up to 3 web sites absolutely free without opportunity to by additional per-site or server licenses.

But not to worry, if once you need to use Ape for more sites and want to upgrade, you can do that by clicking “Update to Full version” button in License Manager.

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This article was aimed to cover all Helicon Ape licensing capabilities which are rather flexible and let you benefit from using the most appropriate one.

Best wishes,
Anton, HeliconTech Team

1. Password generation utility

Create an empty file. Go to Options -> Insert user password… and you are at the right place.

This utility allows you to generate passwords for Basic and Digest authentication types using MD5 or SHA1 encryption or plain text.

If you want to create several passwords, you may use Ctrl+Enter hotkey to prevent Password generator from closing after the password is inserted.

2. Regex testing utility

When you put the cursor anywhere on RewriteRule line, you can test its operability using RegexTest utility. Just press F4 or go to Options -> RewriteRule tester…

3. Magnet

This small but sometimes really useful button (next to Options menu item) allows to open other configuration file (from other location) next to the tab with currently opened config (not instead of it).

4. Directives Autocompletion

Helicon Ape Manager supports directives autocompletion which is invoked using standard Ctrl+Space hotkey.

5. Errors highlighting

If you type some directive that is unsupported in the current context, you will see it painted in red.

6. Open selected file

This feature allows to instantly open an existing file which name and path (absolute or relative to the current folder) are written in the config. For that purpose you may either right-click on the file name and choose “Open selected file” or use File -> Open selected file… (Ctrl+Shift+O) menu item.

7. Open site in browser from Manager

Helicon Ape Manager allows to open any location of the website in default browser by simply right-clicking on desired resource and choosing one of supported protocols (ports).

8. Web.config editing

Apart from it’s direct purpose to make editing of Helicon Ape configs fast and handy, Helicon Ape Manager allows to edit web.config files as well.

9. Color scheme in web-sites tree

To make it easier for you to know which folders contain .htaccess files, which contain web.configs and which both, we’ve used this color scheme:

1. with .htaccess – folder name in black
2. with web.config – folder name with light orange background
3. with both – folder name in black with light orange background
4. without either – folder mane in grey

10. Multiple lines comment

This feature may look obvious for those using Microsoft Visual Studio, but that does not diminish its convenience. You may comment/uncomment multiple lines in Helicon Ape Manager in one click.

Some of the above features may not have been as obvious as we thought, but we want you to use them not to complicate simple things, that’s why we’ve written this small but hopefully helpful article. So, enjoy!