ASP.NET Programming Websites

How to setup 301 Redirects in IIS 7 for good SEO

Nov 14, 2011 by Author

Everybody knows that in order to properly preserve Google Page Rank when you are moving a page on a site, you need to perform a 301 Redirect to the new page, as this tells search engines this is a permanent move, and to record it into their index.  However few people realize the additional problem of duplicate content across multiple domains.  So if you have both your domain and your www subdomain pointing at the same site, its likely that google is penalizing you for this. So in this article I show you how to properly setup a website with multiple domains using IIS 7.5 and 301 redirects for good SEO.

ABCPDF component HTML render is blank solution

Nov 7, 2011 by Author

Recently I had to migrate one of my clients from their VPS to my colocated box.  The Old box was windows Server 2003, and my server was Windows Server 2008 R2.  However after migrating the first of several sites, I noticed the ABCPDF component was not working properly.  Any request to generate a PDF would error with "HTML render is blank".  If you are in the same situation, then I have a fix.

Debugging Faulting Application w3wp.exe Crashes

May 31, 2011 by Author

If your websites are going down, due to your application pool failing, or being automatically shut down after a few application errors, then you have a major problem on your hands.  In my case the symptom was A process serving the application pool suffered a fatal communication error with the Windows Process Activation Service, in my system logs.  If you have each website running in its own application pool then you know which website is going down, but the errors being displayed give you no hints as to the cause.  I recently had a website that was randomly going down.  Sometimes it would go down every few days, and other times it would only crash once a month.  So I finally did some digging for the cause, and found it.  If you don't know where to start in debugging your crashed application pools, this might help.

asp.net Stopwatch is better than DateTime

May 2, 2010 by Author

In the continuing pursuit of getting my FLV scrubbing application to work correctly, I came across the need to time part of my code.  If you are used to using the DateTime object you might want to try something else.  Turns out DateTime is meant for Date and Times, and is pretty useless to use as a stopwatch when timing the performance of lines of code within your application.

FLV Scrubbing with throttling

Apr 30, 2010 by Author

In the old days of the internet if you wanted to provide videos on your website, you would use embed tags, or play an FLV via a flash SWF.  But the problem with this the huge amount of wasted transfer that results.  So I set out to develop a customized handler using asp.net that would allow FLV scrubbing, and also allow throttling to save on bandwidth.

Hacker Attacks and Invalid character in a Base-64 string

Jan 13, 2010 by Author

On my websites I have them setup to email me anytime a server error happens.  If you ever get an error like "Invalid character in a Base-64 string",  This is likely a hacker attack.   In my case it was on the members login on my client's website.  I logged in and shut down the site.  10 minutes later I started it back up and the hacker had left.  Interesting is what the HTTP RAW data reveled.

HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR:84.0.182.175, 84.0.162.91, 84.0.237.176, 84.0.228.6, 84.0.220.100, 84.0.147.233, 84.0.159.1, 84.0.84.37 HTTP_PROXY_CLIENT_IP:84.0.182.175, 84.0.162.91, 84.0.237.176, 84.0.228.6, 84.0.220.100, 84.0.147.233, 84.0.159.1, 84.0.84.37 HTTP_CLIENT_IP:84.0.182.175, 84.0.162.91, 84.0.237.176, 84.0.228.6, 84.0.220.100, 84.0.147.233, 84.0.159.1, 84.0.84.37

Never seen these values before.  According to the logs the IPs were from hundreds of compromised systems. However they all had these values in common.   I am going to add a rule to detect the Class A IP in the 80.x.x.x block in the HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR, and block.  Hopefully this helps some other people out

w3wp.exe using too much memory and resources

Oct 1, 2009 by Author

If you are having problems with the w3wp.exe process using too much memory, I have the solution to your problems.  Not only will this reduce the size of your w3wp.exe but it will also speed up your website and reduce the amount of transfer your site uses. 

fixing The remote host closed the connection. The error code is 0x80070057

Sep 11, 2009 by Author

If you are running Windows Server 2008, and IIS 7.  Then the chances are you might have seen this mystery error. The remote host closed the connection. The error code is 0x80070057.  After reading multiple forums, I have found the solution.

So if your event viewer is full of errors like this

Base:
System.Web.HttpException: The remote host closed the connection. The error code is 0x80070057. at System.Web.Hosting.IIS7WorkerRequest.RaiseCommunicationError(Int32 result, Boolean throwOnDisconnect) at System.Web.Hosting.IIS7WorkerRequest.ExplicitFlush() at System.Web.HttpResponse.Flush(Boolean finalFlush) at System.Web.HttpResponse.Flush() at System.Web.HttpWriter.Write(String s) at System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter.Write(String s) at ASP.photo_aspx.__Render__control1(HtmlTextWriter __w, Control parameterContainer) at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderChildrenInternal(HtmlTextWriter writer, ICollection children) at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderChildren(HtmlTextWriter writer) at System.Web.UI.Page.Render(HtmlTextWriter writer) at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControlInternal(HtmlTextWriter writer, ControlAdapter adapter) at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer, ControlAdapter adapter) at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)

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How to get godaddy to work with custom 404 on multiple asp.net websites

Jul 27, 2009 by Author

If you have found this blog post, the chances are you have already searched the web for hours trying to figure this out.  Running a single website on godaddy is not a problem.  but once you start running multiple asp.net websites on your godaddy hosting account, and they all use custom 404 handling as part of URL rewriting you will run into problems. Here is how I made it work.

Adobe ditches ASP.NET Support in Dreamweaver CS4

Dec 20, 2008 by Author

I first started making websites using frontpage, then I started using dreamweaver, and life was good.  This was back in the days when dreamweaver was run by macromedia.  Back when Dreamweaver was in version 4.0 ( way back ).  Well on the latest release of CS4 I guess Adobe decided that it was better to not provide any support for .NET guys like myself than to provide support for older ASP.NET 1.1 components.  I recently updated to CS4 only to discover this after the fact.  To say the lease it was not a good day.