To get started with ELMAH follow these simple steps:

1. Download ELMAH from http://code.google.com/p/elmah/
2. Extract the contents and run the SQL script located in the db folder against your project database
3. Open the Web.config.template folder which is located in samplesDemo.  This gives you an overview of the changes you need to make to your web.config file for ELMAH to work.
4. When you’re done configuring your web.config copy the Elmah.dll for your version of .Net in to your bin folder.  Then attempt to load your website.
5. Any errors displayed will almost certainly be as a result of errors in your web.config changes.
6. If your site loaded successfully, chances are ELMAH is working.  Navigate to http://yoursite/elmah.axd and you should see the default ELMAH log page.
7. Yourmay wish to hide your elmah page by either securing it using web.config or simply moving the location of the elmah page away from the default location.  This is easily done by updating the path attribute your web.config line:<add verb=”POST,GET,HEAD” path=”elmah.axd” type=”Elmah.ErrorLogPageFactory, Elmah”/>
8. ELMAH provides a configuration section and setting to enable or disable remote access to the error log display and feeds. When disabled (the default), only local access to the error log display and feeds is allowed. The snippet below shows how to enable remote access:<elmah> �
   <security allowRemoteAccess=”1″ /> �
   </elmah>

We recommend using the RSS feeds and built in e-mail notifications to ensure that you’re always one step ahead of those pesky exceptions!

So we’ve been quiet over the summer but for good reason, our new chairman has been driving us forward hard and as a result we have a number of amazing things to shout about.

Firstly we should tell you the five big goals we now have in place for the next two years, they’re ambitious but we think we can achieve at least two out of  five.  In fact, we have already achieved our first goal of opening office space in London:

1. Open office space in London – done!
2. Rebrand Atlas starting with our logo – done, we have a new website too
3. Hit the £2m per year turnover mark in the next two years – yes we know turnover is vanity but it’s a nice round target to aim for
4. Position ourselves as the Software as a Service (SaaS) development company in the UK, Europe and maybe the world
5. Get Atlas certified with Microsoft - done, see the blog post on our experience here

So we now have offices in London, the exact address you’ll find on our contact page.  Over the last couple of years we have been working on larger projects for bigger customers and we want to locate ourselves so that we’re easily accessible.  We’ll keep our offices in Essex as there’s no real benefit in relocating all of the staff to London.

To coincide with our new business aims it was decided that it is high time for a rebrand.  We’re already working on our new logo and can’t wait to show off the new website when that’s ready around December time.

So what’s with the turnover target I hear you ask?  Well KPIs as I’ve come to know them, or in other words numbers you can review every day/week/month to get a feel for your business, are in my opinion fun and exciting to watch.  The turnover is an obvious target, and I’m also monitoring our turnover in conjunction with our net profit, cost of sales, revenue per customer/industry and a few other internal metrics to ensure that we focus on the most profitable areas of the company.  On a more personal note, large goals such as the £2m turnover mark in two years are also incredibly important for me as CEO to keep me focused on the bigger picture.

Our final target is slightly less tangible but nonetheless still very important.  We genuinely feel that there is a lack of SaaS development taking place in the UK and Europe.  Yes we have a number of SaaS applications but there aren’t any software development companies out there saying  “If you want SaaS application development, come to us”.  So as nobody else has bothered to go for it, we’ve decided we’re going to fill that position.  We want the name Atlas to be synonymous with that of SaaS application development.

Finally, we’re now Microsoft Silver partners.  This Microsoft level of accreditation was formerly known as certified which this week they have scrapped.  Because of this we have to wait until November to retrieve our shiny new logo for our website.  We’re now working towards gold partnership, only 65 partner points to go!!

We’ve made this process much easier using a neat little .Net system tray application we’ve created.  The app runs in your system tray, you click and hold your mouse on its icon, drag over the top of the colour you wish to grab, and then let go to copy the hexadecimal code of your selected colour to your clipboard.  It couldn’t be easier.

When we attempted to upload the HTTP module for some reason it simply wouldn’t fire and therefore our URL rewriting didn’t work.

After some furious Googling we came across the solution to this problem. Here’s the steps we took:

- Load up IIS management console
- Load properties for the affected site
- Open the Home Directory tab
- Click the application configuration button
- Click the Insert button and enter a path to the file that we wish to process requests. In this case the file is c:windowsmicrosoft.netframeworkv2.0.50727aspnet_isapi.dll
- Untick the option to check that file exists
- Click OK on all of the screens and close out of the management console

Your URLs will now be rendered accordingly using your HTTP module. Not simple but at least you know how!