Installation Guide

You will only require to read this section if you are running Blue Box Intranet in-house. Hosted intranets are held on our servers and all files are pre-installed and updated by us. We suggest that your network administrator or a member of your I.T. department manage the installation.

Server Requirements

Blue Box Intranet is coded in Microsoft ASP.Net 2.0. This means that you will need a Microsoft server to run the software. We recommend Windows Server 2003 or later, however Microsoft XP Professional is sufficient.

Minimum Requirements:

  1. Windows server capable of running IIS 5 or later.
  2. Functioning network capable of accessing the server via HTTP.
  3. .Net Framework 2.0 runtime installed on the server.

Client Requirements

The intranet is accessed by the user via a web browser. No additional software is required on the client machines but we do recommend that the latest version of Internet Explorer or Mozilla is installed. The client machine does not need to be Windows based.

Minimum Requirements:

  1. Internet Explorer 6.0 or later; or the latest Firefox or Mozilla browsers. Both of these are available as free downloads. The intranet will work on Apple Macs using Safari to varying degrees depending on the version installed.
  2. Javascript enabled within the browser.

Installing the Files

The files will have been provided to you either on CD or within a windows compatible zip file. These files will need to be installed on the web server as follows:

Installation Process Part 1 - File Installation:

  1. Create a directory on your server in which to install the files. For example:

    e:\Blue Box Intranet
  2. Copy the files from the CD, or unzip the files into this directory.
  3. Once this process has completed you will now see two folders, "htdocs" and "Resource"; "htdocs" contains the code necessary to run the intranet and this folder must form the root of your website application when setting this up in Internet Information Services (step 2 below). Important - Two folders need to have write and modify permission settings for the "iuser" Windows account. Taking "e:\Blue Box Intranet" as an example these folders will be:

    e:\Blue Box Intranet\Resource
    e:\Blue Box Intranet\htdocs\media\images

Once part 1 is complete you can now configure Internet Information Services (IIS).

Installation Process Part 2 - Configuring IIS:

  1. Open IIS and then expand the "Websites" folder.
  2. We suggest Blue Box Intranet is set up as a Virtual Directory under the "Default Website". To do this right click on "Default Website" and select "New > Virtual Directory".
  3. Within the Virtual Directory wizard enter the following information:

    • Alias: "blueboxintranet" (without the quotes).
    • Path: "e:\Blue Box Intranet\htdocs" (or wherever you installed the files in part 1 above, note the "htdocs" is important).
    • Allow "Read" and "Execute" permissions.

  4. After finalising the wizard Blue Box Intranet will now have been configured as a new Virtual Directory and you will see it has been added to the list. As a final step right click on its entry in the list and then click the ASP.Net tab. In the "ASP.Net Version" setting ensure that "2.X.X.X" is selected (where X is the exact version).

Accessing the Intranet

After successful completion of part 2 Blue Box Intranet is now ready to use. To access the intranet you will need the IP address of your web server and will access it by typing the address into a web browser on a client machine as such:

http://192.168.1.110/blueboxintranet (where 192.168.1.110 is the IP address of your web server).

Your network administrator will be able to tell you the IP address of your server or install a friendly URL through which to access the software.