Q&A: Why the customization made to JasperReports Server home page does not work 

The Question:

I am adding a link to the JasperReports Server (JRS) home page to access third party reference materials. The change however does not show up when testing it in a web browser. After restarting the server several times, the change finally showed up but I got a "HTTP Status 404 – Not Found" message when trying to access it through the hyperlink from the home page.

Even after changing the URL reference in the home page to a Jaspersoft community wiki page and restarting the server, the hyperlink from the home page is still directing the request to the old page. Could you please tell me what is going on and how to fix it?

The Answer:

First of all, when using hyperlink in a web page, the user should test it in a browser to make sure it is accessible via HTTP request from this origin. If encountering a "404 FILE NOT FOUND" error, the user needs to make sure 1) the server is up and running 2) without any content blocking and 3) the requested content is indeed in that URL location. If the above three conditions are all satisfied, the only plausible cause for it not showing up is the file permissions. User needs to check the web server settings and make sure the content is accessible via HTTP request. This is an environmental issue and has nothing to do with JRS web application functionality.

As for getting the stale content in the home page, user needs to clean up the work directory under apache-tomcat before restarting the server, and clear the browser cache to get rid of the obsolete web content in the cache forcing the browser to request the server to provide a fresh copy of the web content.

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TTC-20220331-2095780