Diagnose Errors

Overview

As in any other system, errors can occur in WebsydianExpress. The errors can have many different reasons - ranging from object being used by the framework that has not been deployed to errors occurring because of an incomplete setup of the sites used.

In general the more serious errors will result in a generic message being shown to the user. This message just states that an error has occurred. In general, users will not benefit from more information - and of security reasons we do not want to show more detailed information about the error.

However, this information is of course not enough for the administrator / operations manager to diagnose the problem. To make the error handling easier WebsydianExpress includes a message log, containing all the errors that the system has registered.

In addition to being an aid to the administrator, when researching problems in a running environment, a lot of the messages thrown also aim to make it easier for the developer to identify the reasons for the application not behaving as expected and for the administrator to identify problems occurring when changing the site.

How to use the message log

The message log is accessed through the menu item "Utilities -> Message log" in the administration menu.

The message log shows a list of all messages that has occurred in the system (for all sites).

When an error has been reported or observed you should always check whether the message log contains any entries for the time, where the error has occurred.

Each thrown message will show a text, which contains specific information (e.g. user or session information) for the error situation. For each entry you can press the Help icon to receive more information about the error and the steps you can take to solve the problem.

A list of all message types used by WebsydianExpress can be found here.