From questions I’ve seen on the Windows Home Server forums one of the most sought after customizations is changing the default image on the homepage of your server.
If you’ve tried to do this yourself you’ve probably found it isn’t very easy. You need to login via Remote Desktop, find the correct file, and then use an image editing program to paste your new image into the correct place, then resave the file.
Yeah, I never found the time to change mine either 
Anyway, one of the goals of Whiist is to make managing all of the websites on your Windows Home Server a great deal easier, and to this end the latest version of Whiist (0.8) now includes a simple editor that lets you change this image.
Go to the Whiist options page using the settings button on the menu bar and you will find the option to customize your home page, along with a preview of how the page will look. In the editor select an image and use the mouse to position/zoom as desired. When you click ‘Apply’ Whiist will generate a new image for your Windows Home Server page and save it in the appropriate place.
I’m still working one a couple of “bigger” features for Whiist that I hope to have ready in the new year. I’m not quite ready to say what these are yet, but if you like blogging and photo galleries I think you’ll be happy
Merry Christmas!
2007/12/22, 19:44
Andrew,
Nice addition to Whiist! I’ve been doing it the hard way for some moths now and I’ve posted some “how To’s” on this subject on the WHS forums. I’m sure many will enjoy modding their home page in an easier way with Whiist. I’ll give your newest version a test drive over the holiday.
Thanks for the continued additions to Whiist’s impressive line up of options! Looking forward to your up coming additions to Whiist in the future. If you need a test drive dummy……. LOL
2007/12/23, 03:57
Andrew thanks for the continuing work on Whiist. It was the first add-on I installed and still the most useful. I have one question though. How can I add a link to a web site hosted on another PC on my network? I run a non-MS web server on a separate PC and would like to add a link on my WHS homepage to one of these sites. I am sure it is obvious, but I can’t see what to do.
Have a great Christmas and don’t spend to long working on this great add-on.
2007/12/23, 06:42
Hi Simon,
What you want to do actually isn’t that easy. For example to be able to follow that link the machine on your network would have to be accessible externally with its own domain or address, and likely its own port since I imagine you only have a single IP address. I believe you can configure IIS to refer all access to a site (yourserver.homeserver.com/whatever) to a webserver on the local network but I’m not sure of the details.
2007/12/23, 07:02
Hi Andrew
I knew there was actually a simple answer and it just needed a comment from you to point me in the right direction, I think. Anyway I have 1 static IP address and port 80 pointing to my web server. I only use HTTPS for WHS. So I have used your ‘link to existing website’ to add the link and so far it works. Now have to double check by accessing WHS from outside my network.
Regards
Simon
2007/12/23, 13:53
Hey Andrew,
I have downloaded and installed Wiist as I configure my new Home Server. I played around with the Beta and then purchased the OEM software and installed it on a new Vostro dual core machine. When I downloaded wiist, it came as a zip folder. I unziped it and downloaded the program. What I cannot figure out how to do – step by step instructions would be soooo appreciated – is how to save the wiist file so that it appears in the settings menu on the main console. I have not been able to figure out how to do that and as of yet cannot get wiist to appear in the add-ins on the settings bar. Your work so far is very much appreciated. Merry Christmas
2007/12/23, 14:18
Hi,
Extract the contents of the zip file to \\server\software\add-ins. Whiist should then be availabe to install from the add-in options in the settings menu
2007/12/23, 17:50
Ok. I managed to copy the wiisp file to the installed add-ins folder in Windows Home Server settings.I cannot find the “options page” using the settings button, as you describe it…”Go to the Whiist options page using the settings button on the menu bar and you will find the option to customize your home page, along with a preview of how the page will look”. Once I click on settings and the window opens up….what next? Could you please walk me through it?
Thanks…
2007/12/23, 18:46
Nick,
After you’ve copied the program over you need to install the add-in, if you need details about this see the WHS help files.
After installation you should see a new “manage websites” tab in your console. You can either click “settings” here to go straight to the whiist options, or go to the WHS settings as normal and choose “whiist” from the left. Either way you should then see the option to launch the image editor.
I’m not sure I can explain it any other way!
2007/12/24, 09:43
Yesterday I upgraded Whist from 0.78 to 0.8 and it all worked fine. Later that evening it all turned sour and now I can’t even get to the console. I’m going to try reinstalling Whiist. I’ll let you know.
2007/12/24, 10:22
No joy on the reinstall of Whiist.
2007/12/24, 14:25
What exactly are you seeing?
2007/12/24, 15:12
I should add that during that same period I installed .net updates too. I’m not pointing fingers and there are other problems in WHS that could not possibly have anything at all to do with Whiist. I am grasping at straws looking for help.
2007/12/24, 15:44
hey jeshimon,
From the HTML error page you sent me I the problem looks unrelated to whiist, it seems the ASP code used by the main ‘home’ page is encountering errors. You can follow the instructions on the error page to get more details that might help you narrow the problem
2007/12/27, 18:31
I also do not see the Settings button on the Website Management tab’s toolbar, nor do I see a page for it in the Settings page list.
Did I need to uninstall .78 before installing .80?
I’m also running Brendan Grant’s Tab ReOrder add-in… could be causing a conflict?
2007/12/27, 18:36
Andrew,
Thanks for the new version, the homepage photo option is a nice touch, can you add another option to change the photo on the remote/default page? I read above about new features in the new year and one of them might be a blog. I installed something called blogenginenet.net on my WHS server, very easy to install and doesn’t require PHP or Sql and works great, maybe you could incorporate it into Whiist? Thanks and Happy New Year….Geo
2007/12/27, 20:26
I appreciate your hard work.!
Thanks and all the best in 2008 !
2007/12/28, 01:19
Shoek,
Yes, you need to uninstall the old version first. Infact you should not have been able to install 0.8 before doing so.
The add-in settings page should list the add-ins you have installed along with their numbers.
2007/12/29, 10:33
Your program is great!!! Is there a way I can set permissions so only people I want can actually download a picture? Thanks
2007/12/30, 17:06
Hey Andrew,
First off i would just like to say how much I love WHIIST ever since the beginning days over the summer when I got RC running and added WHIIST immediately afterwards.
My question is though, how exactly does the image editor work? I changed my image by photoshopping my desired image over the default image in the i_landingpage_main.png file. So how did you do it that is different from how I did it, and are there any pro’s and con’s to each side?
2007/12/30, 17:39
Josh,
Thanks for the comments. Whiists image editor probably does exactly the same things you did via photoshop (scale, position, crop, paste, save). If you only want to replace the picture of the family then Whiist’s a better choice as it’s 10x quicker
using photoshop would give you the ability to also change the surround but the process is then a lot more involved.
I hope to add some additional options in future versions that allow a few other simple yet personalized changes.
2008/01/01, 07:41
Thanks Darrell, I appreciate the update as I don’t want to break my HP stuff. I guess I will have to wait longer before using this to modify the pictures to see when these issues are fixed.
2008/01/02, 09:23
Thank you Andrew for the program, I like it verry much.
I also upgrade the program from 0.7.8 to the 0.8 wersion en did not find the settings tab.
Uninstalled it and installed it again en al is working fine.
Thanks again.
Arjan
from
The Netherlands
2008/01/05, 15:43
Just an FYI….if you have an older version of Wiist, you must uninstall it before installing 0.8…If you don’t uninstall the old version, you will not be able to see or access the settings tab for Wiist in order to chnage the website picture. I know because I went through the whole yhing and finally figured I had to uninstall version 0.78 and then re-install 0.8. Now it works. Good work Andy!
2008/01/16, 06:03
Hi Andrew
I really like your Whiist add-in and have used it to create some nice picture pages on my home server.
I’m so impressed with the way pictures are presented, that I would like to use the same format to show pictures on my main Family Photos web page.
Is it possible to re-create this style of page on an external web page? Or is it only available on a WHS?
I would run it all from my WHS, but its too slow.
2008/01/25, 20:13
Changing the image for the home page seems to stay with the Windows Home Server logo. In Whiist I changed the image but it remains the same. I remoted into the server to find the image I want is where its supposed to be but will not display on my login page.
2008/02/03, 11:28
Andrew, great stuff. I do have a couple questions. 1) Is there a way to easily change the title on the server home page? For example, you have “Andrews Test Server”. How do I access that?
2) I am using an HP Mediasmart Server. It comes with a PhotoWebshare utility. The interface and upload is aweful. I liked the functionality of yours, but I would really like to have it set up to show all albums on one page and have security access to each one. Is that possible with your tool?
2008/02/19, 14:18
Hi Pete,
In answer to your questions;
1) You can do this within the Remote Access Settings panel of the WHS console.
2) If you want to have a list of available albums, and separate permissions for each, the only way to do this would be to create a webpage that listed all albums with a link to each.
2008/03/24, 07:19
The “bigger” features you mentioned above will complete the picture I have in mind for my Windows Home Server. a) Access to all my files, securely, from anywhere. b) Access to all my pictures (never taken a 35mm since 1996) from anywhere and the ability to securely share them with family members, c) A family blog to share stories and pictures.
The sooner you are done the closer I am to meeting my goal.
Pierre
2008/06/11, 03:53
First of all let me say thanks for a nice app, everything worked well. This issue is user related, when Whiist creates the index.html page how do I create a link on that page to allow users to click on the link and be taken to the data that resides in a sub directory one level deeper than Whiist, thanks.
2008/11/20, 13:04
I’m not having any luck with this Add-in. When I try to add a website, I click the “browse” button when choosing the share folder to use, and it just hangs. Any ideas? I can’t cancel or anything.
2009/02/04, 08:42
Easiest way is to throw a monitor on the server and go into c://inetpub/wwwroot/images and find the one with “main” in the title, edit it or create a new photoshop image at the same size and replace the default with one named exactly the same, took me 5 minutes and works best!
2009/08/19, 01:07
Hi, I’ve installed whiist and can run the program but it doesn’t change my picture. What am i doing wrong?
Thanks