WebRespond: Site Implementation

I have had a number of reports where the email delivery portion of WebRespond does not work. To address this problem as well as discuss issues related to implementing WebRespond on your own site I have added this page of documentation.

Why install WebRespond on your network.

If you use the email portion of WebRespond, WebRespond will attempt to connect to the server which contains the WebRespond applet. If your web page, which calls WebRespond, is on a different server you may not be allowed an email connection to this first server. To get around this problem you can install WebRespond on the same server as your web pages. This should allow WebRespond access to an email connection in order to deliver the results of the quiz.

Using WebRespond on your network.

By performing the following steps WebRespond should work on your server.

Download the the archive file for WebRespond. Click here to download wresp10.zip.
Unzip the file wresp10.zip and place the file wrespond.zip on your server. Wrespond.zip could be placed in the same directory as your calling web page.
Change the CODEBASE of the applet call tag in your calling web page. If you are using the template provided from my web site, you should change CODEBASE="http://www.cedarville.edu/employee/gollmers/wrespond" to CODEBASE="location on your server". Replace the text between the two quotes with the address of your web server and the directory location of wrespond.zip on your server. If wrespond.zip is in the same directory as your calling web page, you do not need to specify the codebase.

Discussion of WebRespond's email function.

After installing WebRespond on your server you may still have problems getting an email connection. The following discussion addresses some known work arounds and the basic email procedure of WebRespond. If you still have problems or if you come up with an additional work around please contact me at gollmers@cedarville.edu.

WebRespond attempts to connect to port 25 of the server containing the code base. Port 25 is the standard port used for sending email. The address of the server is determined from the code base which is made available to all applets. This information is available to the applet whether you include the CODEBASE statement in your applet call or not.
The "TO: address" (destination) of your email is taken directly from the reportaddress of the quiz. If a report address is not specified, WebRespond will not attempt to send an email message.
The "FROM: address" (source) of your email is taken from the login id of the person taking the quiz. If you do not require a password login, then WebRespond will send the name of the host machine.
The error dialog box obtained while sending email is not set up to identify a specific type of error. To track down the actual error look at the Java log of your browser. The following messages should appear in the Java log.
EmailSender: Successful in establishing email connection. - This indicates that WebRespond was able to make a connection to port 25 of the server. If an error occurs here, I would suspect a conflict with the security protocol of your server. Talk to your system administrator about possible solutions to this access problem.
EmailSender: Successful in establishing an email output stream. - This indicates that an output stream has been established for sending the email message. I would not expect an error at this point. If there is an error, let me know because it will be directly related to how I am using Java.
EmailSender: Successful in establishing an email input stream. - This indicates that an input stream has been established for receiving responses from the server. Again I would not expect an error at this point.
Response to the email "HELO" command. - I'm not sure exactly how this line will appear; however, it should indicate that your server is responsive to this email connection.
Response to the email "MAIL FROM:" command. - This line should indicate that the FROM address is acceptable. If you get an error message here, the server is restricting email access to certain users. You may work around this by giving each user a login name which contains an email address acceptable to the server. You should coordinate this with your system administrator.
Response to the email "RCPT TO:" command. - This line should indicate that the TO address is acceptable. Since this is the report address given in the quiz master file, you must make sure the server is able to resolve this address. If you have trouble at this point, contact your system administrator.

The rest of the email commands send the body of the message which contains the results of the quiz and closes the connection to the server. I have not had any reports of problems at this point and beyond. The primary problems are associated with establishing a valid connection and resolving the addresses for the sender and receiver.