BizTron

1and1 VPS Hosting and You

BizTron — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:04:26 -0400

With all the troubles I’ve had with hosting plans throughout the years, I’ve always wondered how to avoid those same problems for a second time. Of course, I’d love to avoid them for the first time, so I Google them first. No, not the problem, but how to avoid problems doing something “odd” with my service. Let’s say I want to do something really strange like cancel a server or hosting service. I know, it’s way out there, but please bare with me…I ask the Service Provider what I need to do, after starting with the on-line FAQs, help, forums, etc. and they say go to this “special” site for canceling service. OK, it must be “intuitive” or they would have given me more details, right!? The stand-up comic in me wants to draw this out to its proper conclusion…lots of laughs; but the software developer, architect, infrastructure novice and business owner in me wants to lend a hand.

What Problem was actually resolved?

There are way too many scenarios to list in one sitting, but I can probably link to them from here later, or answer specific questions in comments if I see them. But my most recent issue was due to the fact that I wanted to upgrade a 1and1.com VPS account to one that was half the price I was paying (for 3 months…and I highly recommend this.) That wasn’t the deal maker though. It was for the same ‘everything’ except a faster server, with 8 cores, and 4 times the memory. The problem: It was the SAME service level, VPS III, so they could not do an “upgrade” for me" as they had done before from VPS II to III. They couldn’t just expand the memory, or copy the virtual server to a new disk. This seems like simple work, but only from a guy who works with Virtual PC, Virtual Server, VM ware Workstation, and Hyper-V all day. So when asked what I need to do, this was what they told me. I need to order a NEW server, then move everything to that server…then cancel the old server. It was said as if I was moving a TV into the other room and then locking the door behind me.

Here are the issues:

e-mail accounts
external domains
DNS changes take time to propagate
paying for 2 servers
primary domain (free with your server)
GoDaddy is my domain registrar

Here are the pluses:

1and1 has easy to use tools.
I can do the work myself ;)

DNS, domains and e-mail

In order cancel a domain, or more precisely an “external domain”, you need to go to “cancel.1and1.com”. Seems obvious, right!? :) Then you select the domain, and select when to cancel it. I shouldn’t need screen shots, but let me know. An external domain is one that is registered elsewhere and hosted by your 1and1 server or hosting service. You use 1and1’s name servers and they allow you to point the domain at your server or service. DNS is not fun work, and there are several tricks I get to use to REALLY simplify the process, so I have to use this service. However, when you cancel, you still have to wait to reuse it. If I was moving my domain hosting to a different service, I could configure that hosting service to handle the domain, then point at the name servers. When DNS propagated, it would already be in place. However, this isn’t the case when moving between contracts at 1and1. So, cancel, wait impatiently, re-configure on the new server or hosting account. If e-mail is truly important, you should move your e-mail to another service entirely, or at least while the move takes place. I didn’t do this, but will look at it for the next time.

While waiting for domains to become “canceled” I configured the new server for the applications it will host. When ready, I re-add the “external domains” to the new account and the web applications are ready. If all went well, the name servers never changed, only the ip address so finding the new server is instantaneous.

Since some of the work takes up to a week of waiting, I wanted to do it in manageable chunks. But now that I know what lies at the end of the path I can say the correct way to handle my situation, not withstanding the e-mail process I didn’t follow, was to move my applications and then cancel all the “external domains” at once, then cancel the “package” or contract. This would have allowed me to transfer the free domain I needed back to my other registrar (GoDaddy.com). I also will not, and have not chosen a useful “free” domain that I will rely on in the future so I don’t have to worry about losing it or depending on it. A month or so later, I’m still not finished…or should I say, I’m still waiting!? How much did this move ultimately cost me? I can’t say since at worst, it’s a wash. But since I gained on the technology side I had to do it even if the server was NOT discounted. So I’m happy with the result, just Ticked I had to spend so much brute-force time on something so theoretically simple. If 1and1 should read this, please ask for my quote to solve this problem on your end. I can make it mutually beneficial. :D

In my spare time, (yeah right!!!) I’ll build some tools to automate this not-too-straightforward process. Or search for something already built. :)

The BlogEngine.NET Multi-Blog angle

The major plus allowed me to complete an upgrade project of BlogEngine.NET Multi-blogging capabilities. It moves things quite far along from where it began. I’m still hopeful Jacob Proffitt continues his work on the SqlBlogProvider so BlogEnigne.NET can handle more people’s large scale needs.

Free .NET User Group Event - Markus Egger Presents "The State of .NET"

BizTron — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:11:39 -0400

Received this e-mail today, it speaks for itself:

I just wanted to let you know that Markus Egger will be doing a free 4 stop upstate NY User Group tour Monday July 6 - Thursday July 9.

Markus will be discussing "The State of .NET":
What is the state of .NET today? Which of the many .NET technologies have gained traction? Which ones can you ignore for now? What is new in .NET 3.5 and the coming .NET 4.0? What other Microsoft technologies should you include in your development efforts? This event is It is designed for developers as well as (IT) decision makers. Specific prior knowledge is not required.
Topics will include:

Silverlight 2.0 and 3.0

WPF and Visual Styles

Expression Blend 3

Microsoft Surface

Windows Azure and Cloud Services

WCF

SOA

Markus Egger's Bio:
Markus Egger is the President and CSA of EPS Software Corp. and its associated brands and companies, such as CODE Magazine, CODE Online, Xiine, Tower 48, EPS Austria GmbH, JockTock, and others. EPS is a custom software development and consulting firm located in Houston, Texas (USA) and Salzburg (Austria). He specializes in consulting for advanced business applications built on the Microsoft platform. EPS does most of its development using Microsoft Visual Studio (.NET) and SQL Server (among other technologies). EPS has worked on numerous software projects for Fortune 500 companies including Philip Morris, NEC, Qualcomm, Shell and Microsoft. Markus has also worked on campus as a contractor for the Microsoft Visual Studio team.

Venues:

Buffalo - Monday July 6th, 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM: http://wnydnug.org/2009Meetings/tabid/54/Default.aspx#July.
                Address: Daemen College, Schenck Hall, Room 210 - 4380 Main Street, Amherst, NY 14226-3544
                To register, send e-mail to: events@wnydnug.org (Please include your first & last name by 12PM on Monday 7/6)

Rochester - Tuesday July 7th, 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM: http://www.vduny.org
                Address: Microsoft Office 100 Corporate Woods, Rochester, NY 14623
                To register, send e-mail to: BobNims@vduny.org

Syracuse - Wednesday July 8th, 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM: www.cnydevelopers.net
                Address: New Horizons, 6711 Towpath Road, East Syracuse, New York, 13057
                Register at: www.cnydevelopers.net, or send e-mail to: andy@beaulieu.com

Albany - Thursday July 9th, 6:30 PM - 8:30PM: www.tvug.net
                Address: VersaTrans Solutions, Inc., 4 British American Blvd, Latham, NY   12110
                Register at: www.tvug.net, or send e-mail to: president@tvug.net

SharePoint Designer 2007 is FREE!!!

BizTron — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:44:12 -0400

Download details: SharePoint Designer 2007
SharePoint Designer 2007

And I Quote:

SharePoint Designer 2007

Brief Description

SHAREPOINT DESIGNER 2007 IS NOW FREE! Be sure to watch the video (read more below) to learn more about details and future direction. Office SharePoint Designer 2007 provides the powerful tools you need to deliver compelling and attractive SharePoint sites and quickly build workflow-enabled applications and reporting tools on the SharePoint platform, all in an IT-managed environment.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with Service Pack 2

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 x64 with Service Pack 2

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Service Pack 2

For anyone who tried to figure out where to purchase or acquire SharePoint Designer (aka: the new version of FrontPage) it’s even easier, and cheaper than ever. I may actually support FrontPage extensions on my web server again…if I can get it to work. And, maybe SharePoint itself. Enjoy!!!

SQL BlogEngine.NET and Multi-Blogging

BizTron — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:38:00 -0400

BlogEngine.NET appears to be closer than ever to a Multi-Blog implementation thanks to work done by Jacob Proffitt found here: Multi-blog Obsession. The SQLBlogProvider allows multiple blogs to be supported by a single SQL Server database. Imaging the maintenance and resource requirements, compared with “n” blogs and “n” databases, or “n” folders with “n-times-x” xml files for all those posts. Currently, this provides for a single folder and any number of application instances, all pointing at the same folder. There may be a few potential answers to this, but only if someone deems it a problem. I’m now running about 12 (BlogEngine.NET) blogs in a single location with a single database using the SQLBlogProvider. A few details were worked out to bring this solution up to the 1.5.x version of BlogEngine.NET. While looking at this, I’ve learned a lot about some new features and found some useful and straightforward applications of Linq to SQL.

Future support

If the BlogEngine.NET team comes to roll this solution to the Multi-blog “request” into the core solution, it may need a few tweaks. I’m not sure which ones may or may not be important to everyone but I’ll try to innumerate the issues I see here:

“ONLY” SQL Server support due to Linq to SQL dependency
- I don’t see this as a problem since I wanted this solution myself, however a Linq to Entity or other patterns could certainly be employed for other frameworks or architectures.
Multiple blogs require multiple IIS Applications
- This may be due to BlogEngine.NET core dependencies so it may not be reasonably addressed in the near future. This one item would make sense to “Fix” for me because it would make an already easily maintained multi-blog approach an order of magnitude easier still.
System Resources still grow due to the way BlogEngine.NET loads blog data into lists for performance reasons
- Again this is a core BlogEngine.NET issue for multi-blogging. Not necessarily an urgent matter, but a sizeable problem for many blogs running in a limited environment. Throttling could become necessary.
Each host site depends on host header or specific domain name to define a unique blog
- There may be a some simple answer to this so I’ll try to provide any findings when I’m done testing some of my theories.
No UI for adding or “maintaining” each new blog

Not a difficult problem to solve.

Extensions, including Widgets, are not yet configured per blog.

This only matters for configuration of Extensions that are blog specific. There should be a default setting for every Extension, but also a means for specifying, at least, blog specific settings for certain blogs.
Widget Zone should also be configured and styled per blog. I would like to have Text Widgets displaying things like Author information that does not conflict with other blogs.

Several bugs still exist and should be tracked down and corrected.
- Again, not difficult. Something that will require time and testing.

I’m extremely happy with the results to date but I still consider this a Beta test of the latest BlogEngine.NET source merged with the latest SQLBlogProvider source, plus some merge code of my own. I’m running on a 1and1 VPS solution so everyone can give it a try.

Give a GIF a Transparent Background

BizTron — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:07:00 -0400

Or that’s the idea at least.

Modified:

Insert here when complete:

Can use some Cleanup…

Welcome Back to Reality

BizTron — Thu, 14 May 2009 08:45:00 -0400

Life is busy, imagine that.

After a wonderful break from a wonderful project, I’m finally sitting in the home office thinking about what to Blog about. Since BlogEngine.NET 1.5 has been released recently, It’s probably about time to upgrade my sites. Of course there is also a new MultiBlog approach available, as well. It’s a separate provider based entirely on SQL Server and Uses Linq. After another “minor” extension tweek for BlogRolls, the 2 became out of sync. I help rectify that by creating a stop-gap update for myself that I shared with the original creator. Since I only tweaked what was already done, I can’t take much credit for the results, but I’m sure I can help if the need arises now that I’ve taken a peak a bit further under the hood.

I’m going to try to get a million things done I’ve been putting off since last Summer, the last time I had any kind of break. Who wants to help me publish a book??? Next step is to configure my main blog sites to use the new BlogEngine release, with updates, of course, and see if I can nip the maintenance boogeyman in the bud.

Time savings is awesome. This week I need to install a second doorbell/chime, design a bathroom, clean the garage/prepare for a community garage sale, and spend some more time spectating the kids’ sports. I’m also going to add a few more virtual dev servers and 2 domain controllers to the office. Next week, I may wash the car…it’s only been since last fall.

Merry Christmas, 2008

BizTron — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 11:16:00 -0400

Merry Christmas to All!

Add Custom DateTime Format to Blog Posts

BizTron — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:42:00 -0400

DateTime Format for Blog Posts for BlogEngine.NET

...or wherever you want to standardize output formatting.

Here is a rather simple solution to my issue of Date Time formatting on my blog posts. I noticed that as of a recent version of BlogEngine.NET, the Date looked something like this: "29. June 2008 09:00" I wanted to change it to something more readable to my target readers, some very local, such as: "Sunday, June 29, 2008 09:00 AM". Well, I might want to change it sometime, AND I would like to drop it into multiple Themes, so I decided to place the format in Web.Config AppSettings. I looked up my specific Format and added an appSetting. Then I just replaced the code used in "PostView.ascx" and tested away.

Here's what you can do to implement this yourself.

Go to .NET Framework Developer's Guide, Custom Date and Time Format Strings and/or locate your format string.
- I used "dddd, MMMM dd, yyyy hh:mm tt"
Create an appSettings key such as: Custom.DateFormat and assign your format to the value.
- <add key="Custom.DateFormat" value="dddd, MMMM dd, yyyy hh:mm tt" />
Now add the code to use the format string.
- <%=Post.DateCreated.ToString(ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["Custom.DateFormat"])%>
- original: <%=Post.DateCreated.ToString("d. MMMM yyyy HH:mm") %>

This is what it looks like:

Web.Config ...

PostView.ascx ...

You can add appSettings directly in Web.config, from IIS Manager, if ASP.NET configuration is available, or from "ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool". Although this solution was quick and dirty, the best answer may be to role localization into BlogEngine.NET using cultures. This is not a specialty of mine so I would appreciate any suggestions on this topic. It is likely only a few more lines of code for a "quick and dirty" approach but I'd rather make sure to do it right.

Using the Entity Framework in .Net 3.5 SP1

BizTron — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:00:00 -0400

From: TVUG President, Griff Townsend:

Sorry for the delay in getting this out: things always seem to get hectic around the time to put announcements out, and this month was no exception. With that said, I've spoken with this month's presenter (in the mirror), and he is ready to go.
Using the Entity Framework in .Net 3.5 SP1

Speaker: Griffith Townsend, MCP.Net, MCSE
When: Tuesday September 8th, 2008 - 6:30-9PM
Where: VersaTrans Solutions, Latham, NY

When developing multi-tiered applications, it’s not uncommon that to encounter code and architectural “noise” where a developer is forced to shift languages between the business logic layer and the data layer. The preference of many developers is the use of tools (typically Object Relational Mapping solutions) to abstract the database-specific aspects of the data layer into objects usable by the upper layers by object-oriented programming languages.

Microsoft’s long awaited Entity Framework (EF) is one approach to raise the level of abstraction in complex applications, separating the logical object schema from the underlying data store. EF allows developers a lot of flexibility in creating and mapping database entities, relationships, functions, and procedures into either direct class translations or custom business entities.

In this presentation, Griff Townsend introduces us to the Entity Framework as of its initial release in SP1, providing an architectural overview of EF, while also extending it into a working Data Layer. The presentation will also cover:

Building your first EF model
Using Stored Procedures and customizing business objects in the EF model
Extending the Framework to support more robust data access
LINQ to EF vs. LINQ to SQL
Sharing Entities between layers

Bio: Griff Townsend is a Senior Software Engineer for 6N Systems and the President of the Tech Valley .Net Users Group. In addition to over 14 years of web- and windows- development experience in Central and Upstate New York, he has also taught Software Development for Syracuse University and ITT Tech. He is a Microsoft Certified Developer in .Net, as well as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. He's starting to blog these days, too.

So you want a new BlogEngine.NET Theme?

BizTron — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:45:00 -0400

A simple way to adjust or tweak a theme to your liking can be as simple as a few lines of css code in styles.css. I made a couple very minor changes to achieve the affect of a new background color, content on the right when it was always on the left, and a font color change to go along with the background better. This is what it looked like:

/* I replace the Standard body formatting:
body {
    background-color: #F1F1F1;
    color: #444444;
    font-family: Verdana;
    font-size: 11px;
    margin: 0 auto;
    width: 980px;
    position: relative;
}*/

/* With the following: */
body {
    background-color: #6699FF;
    color: #444444;
    font-family: Verdana;
    font-size: 11px;
    margin: 0 auto;
    width: 980px;
    position: relative;
}

/* I replaced these lines:
#content {
float: left;
width: 70%;
}

#sidepanel {
float: right;
width: 28%;
}

With this... */

#content {
float: right;
width: 70%;
}

#sidepanel {
float: left;
width: 28%;
}

/* I replaced these lines:
#header span { font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 4px;

color: silver; margin: 0px; }

#header a { text-decoration: none; color: white; }

With this...*/

#header span { font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 4px;

color: #0000CC; margin: 0px; }

#header a { text-decoration: none; color: #0000CC; }

Then there was the slight issue with the Date Time format on the Blog post. This is an example of a minor inconvenience and a quick and dirty solution. I'll describe an alternative approach later.

Notice the formatting for June 29, 2008. This date can probably be localized, but today it's hard coded in PostView.aspx.

Note: I changed

<%=Post.DateCreated.ToString("d. MMMM yyyy HH:mm") %>

To...

<%=Post.DateCreated.ToString("dddd, MMMM dd, yyyy hh:mm tt") %>

To get the following results:

Yeah, I know this wasn't earth shattering. But the premise is simple. If there's a theme you want to use, except for a couple small items, change them. The next step from here is to create a BlogEngine.NET theme for version 1.4.5, using an open source. The Widget Zone needs a little tweaking on some of the older 1.2 and 1.3 themes, but we've already done that once (It's just about time for a new theme and BlogEngine.NET 1.4). I hope everyone tries that once so we can have a few more themes right away.

Here's the new theme. I'll call it nonStandard since I'm not a marketing guy: nonStandard.zip (6.28 kb) . Enjoy!!!