We Got Served

For whatever reason, some users want to ditch the picture of the perfect family on their home server’s web page and replace it with something else.  One such add-in to do this, WHS Customiser has been around for awhile, which allows you to change the picture.  WHS Widget is another add-in to do essentially the same thing, except that it replaces the picture with a widget.  If desired, you can change this

to this.

To get from the original opening web page to the new one, you need to install WHS Widget.  Download and copy the msi installer to your D:SoftwareAdd-ins folder, open the WHS Setting Window in the console and install the software from the Add-ins tab, as shown below.

Open the console from your client machine, locate and click on the WHS Widget icon along the top of the console window, as seen below.

It is very simple to change from the default picture to a widget.  Simply click on the “embed” button on one of the widgets that come installed with the add-in.  You will get the following message.

If you are brave enough to click on the Yes button, the “Perfect Family” goes away and is replaced by the widget of your dreams!  At this point, click on the “View Embedded Widget in IE” button at the top of the WHS Widget window.  IE will open up and present you with your new widgetized Home Server Webpage.  Well, sometimes…

I tried this on all the included widgets.  The preview results are shown below.

Jackson Pollock:

Pong:

YouTube:

Magic 8 ball:

Duck Hunt:

perezhilton:

As you can see, some displayed just fine, some not.  I would guess that the default security settings in IE block some of this content.

I did check each by remoting into the my WHS from my workstation.  As you can see, they came up just fine.

A hint that there are some security setting issues can be seen in the following picture when I remote into my WHS.

If you want to add more/other widgets, simply click on one of the links at the bottom of the console window.  I went to www.widgetbox.com to search out something silly.  Once you find one, simply click on the “Get Widget” button.  The “Embed Code” box comes up, as can seen below.  Click on the Copy button.

Go back to the console and click on the “Add New Widget to Library”. Paste in the widget contents to appropriate area and name it whatever you wish.

Click on Save and you will have a new entry in the list.

That’s about it.  Except, if so desired, WHS Widget has a final option to allow you to revert back to the Perfect Family picture.  The non-show of widgets and security warnings kind of bummed me a bit; I just wish all the malware jerks out there would find something better to do, so that I would not have to worry about internet security as much.

I did find one minor annoying bug.  Some bleed-thru would come through on the column headings occasionally.  This happened on another add-in I was looking at recently, so it may be a graphics card problem?

And finally, the wish list.  Other than the wish to not need security settings, it would be nice to able to change the picture on the page that comes up after logging on to the WHS as well.

Author: Eric Langland

Version Reviewed: 1.1.0

Release: 18Dec2008

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