Jerry,
>Thanks for the suggestion. This sounds like a great idea. I haven't played with COM mode very much. However, if I do all my development on a network drive, will I be able to keep my EXE on a network drive if I run in COM mode? Or will I have to copy the EXE to my local drive?
>
>I do this because our network drives get backed up. My dev PC/web server doesn't.
Web Connection can handle the COM EXE being on a different server from the Web Server, but there is more DCOM overhead with that approach (which can be used to call multiple EXE's on multiple machines for scalability of very busy sites -- up to 32 EXE's can be pooled thru DCOM).
Most people, however, run the EXE on the Web Server machine and it's a simple matter to copy a new version there.
Personally, I would not be using the live Web Server as the development machine, as it sounds like you are doing. However, I do all Web Connection development on my laptop, with it acting as a Web Server (Win2K Advanced Server with IIS running) for test purposes. I run in file mode most of the time during development, but also can test in COM mode on the laptop.
When ready to put the new changes on the live site, I upload the EXE and run the Update function on the WC admin menu.