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.

Pinch to Zoom not working on some websites

Nov 6, 2011 by Author

Recently I was working on a new website for a client.  When I got close to completion I checked to see how it looked across various browsers ( Firefox, IE, Chrome, Opera ).  All looked great, then I tried to view it on my HTC Sensation ( Android 2.3.7 ).  Normally when pulling up a website on my cell phone the browser will zoom out to fit the entire website into the width of the screen.  Then you can drag the view around and use pinch to zoom to zoom into places you want to actually read.  However on this new site I couldn't get it working.  The solution was very easy.  Click for details.

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.

How to stay focused during a coding marathon

Aug 18, 2010 by Author

Any Athlete will tell you that success is just as much about staying mentally focused as it is about being physically strong.  Well my fellow desk jockeys the same applies for you.  So in this blog I will share my thoughts on how you can be a more effective programmer. 

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.

Adblockers financial impact on your websites traffic

Feb 12, 2010 by Author

Adblockers have a place in the world.  That place was back when we all were using dial up internet.  Now that everyone is on high speed broadband connections, adblockers are doing more harm than good.  I will show you some concrete data to prove that adblockers are hurting any website that is dependent on Google Adsense for Revenue.

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.