SmartTarget2014 UserControls not evaluating

Question

The published result of a SmartTarget enabled page(below) has properly resolved the TCDL tags, but does not, however, evaluate the SmartTarget user controls at runtime. The below code is rendered to the page, minus the Page Language declaration, as is and unevaluated.

<%@ Page Language="C#" %>

<SmartTarget:promotions region="ST" var="promotion" maxItems="1"> 
    <SmartTarget:itemTemplate> 
        <SmartTarget:promotionalItems> 
            <SmartTarget:itemTemplate> 
                    <tridion:ComponentPresentation pageURI="tcm:3151-18143-64" componentURI="${item.componentUri}" templateURI="${item.templateUri}"/> 
            </SmartTarget:itemTemplate> 
        </SmartTarget:promotionalItems> 
    </SmartTarget:itemTemplate> 
    <SmartTarget:fallbackContent> 

        <br>Fallback content goes here.</br>

    </SmartTarget:fallbackContent> 
</SmartTarget:promotions> 

The web.config for the app is as follows

<configuration>
<system.web>
    <globalization fileEncoding="utf-8" requestEncoding="utf-8" responseEncoding="utf-8" culture="en-US"/>
<pages>
    <controls>
        <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
        <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI.WebControls" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
        <add tagPrefix="tridion" namespace="Tridion.ContentDelivery.Web.UI" assembly="Tridion.ContentDelivery" />
        <add tagPrefix="SmartTarget" namespace="Tridion.SmartTarget.Web.UI" assembly="Tridion.SmartTarget" />
    </controls>
</pages>

</system.web>
<system.webServer>
<validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false"/>
<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true">
    <add type="Tridion.ContentDelivery.AmbientData.HttpModule" name="Tridion.ContentDelivery.AmbientData.HttpModule" /> 
</modules>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

The relevant snippet from my smarttarget_conf below shows that the case of the ST user controls is valid and matching.

   <Tcdl>
        <Prefix>
            <Java>SmartTarget</Java>
            <DotNet>SmartTarget</DotNet>
            <Jstl>
                <Core>c</Core>
            </Jstl>
        </Prefix>

Another possibly related issue deals with the session and smart target cartridges delivered with SmartTarget. When I add those cartridges the app completely breaks with no error and renders a blank html page. This issue combined with the non-evaluation of the SmartTarget controls lead me to believe I may have a corrupt SmartTarget download.

Is there something else that anyone can think of that I might be missing here? Also let me know if there is any other information or configs I can provide to help the diagnosis.

Answer 1

Looks like you've asked it to render JSP tags but your site is running ASP.NET. You should change the Target Language of your Publication Target to ASP.NET and republish.

Answer 2

Here's the steps I'd take to troubleshoot your issue:

1. configure your log file to capture your smart target events (documented here) - you can see the request made to SmartTarget plus you'll see any errors reported
2. use the preview tool within the business manager to test that your triggers are working correctly.
3. Write a bit of code to check that your expected values exist in the ambient data framework, i've dropped an example here

Once you've done these three, perhaps update your question with more information to help solve it, or if you solve it, please provide the answer for every one else.