Articles and Writings

A consolidated solution to various I found on-line to run the reCAPTCHA ASP.NET validation control inside an UpdatePanel.

A quick and dirty how-to for easily restoring an Windows XP Mode VHD to a newly installed Windows 7 machine WITHOUT going through the entire "welcome" setup steps XP Mode requires on new installations.

Netsh is a command line scripting utility that allows you to, either locally or remotely, display or modify the network configuration of a computer that is currently running. As of late, I've used it to run IIS and Apache on

Once again, Facebook has thwarted developers' attempts to build successful applications on their platform by removing the ability to [easily] add application tabs to brand pages.

The following files and folders are pre installed configured by the Ektron site setup. Most of them can be configured through the web.config. Folders %WebRoot% Assets DMS storage location of public uploaded assets %Drive% %CustomPath% AssetLibrary %SiteName% DMS storage location

If you are unfortunate enough to have to support applications running on legacy SQL 2000 databases like me, you are probably aware of the limitation of Visual Studio 2010 and Entity Framework 4.0 for SQL Server 2000. There are plenty

I felt it would be useful (at least for me) to keep a property map available of the System.Uri class and it's respective values as they relate to a standard URI/URL. This should prove useful when forgetting (which I often do) all the fields and their meanings. The following table reflects a standard formatted UR

I've decided to keep tabs on a few bookmarklets I use on a day to day bases. Enjoy.

ASP.NET Implementation of the Google GeoChart Visualization Tools and APIs I have been digging into the Google Chart Tools lately, and have had the opportunity to utilize a few of them on client projects. This article will offer a rudimentary implementation. The particular chart that is quite useful, especiall

The Ektron knowledgebase contains an article, How To Define Data Lists In Content using smart forms and structured content. These content based lists can be used on smart form templates, html forms, or anywhere else you need structured lists. When attemping to implement this custom logic, you may run into the

How To Disable The Windows Shutdown Event Tracker

To my knowledge (and patience to find another means), this is the only way to change the default editor height for the catalog entry editor window in the Ektron CMS400.Net workarea. Because, if you have clients like I do, they probably don't like trying to edit entire pages of content in an itty bitty 400px high

Over the past day or so, I have been dealing with a quite elusive and frustratingly evil build problem in one of many web projects in our Team Foundation System build environment. Apparently, though we have a rule to excluded the "obj" folder from our commits, someone on the team "somehow" committed the "obj" folder

This article demonstrates how to setup a basic unit test project to take care of code coverage of a standard ASP.NET website. This article assumes you have created an ASP.NET Web Application project (not ASP.NET Website). Setup a Unit Test Project Open your solution in Visual Studio 2010 Click Test |

This article demonstrates a basic implementation of a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) on an ASP.NET based website. Create and Configure a Custom Search Engine Log in and create a custom search engine account . Standard edition is free, but requires that you display the ads on the results pages. Site Searc

When not using a full MSBuild deployment, I leverage the Windows Robocopy utility to deploy website files. I have put together a job template for reference and general use. Enjoy. :: Source Directory : /sd:c:\%SOURCE_PATH% :: Source Directory. :: Destination Directory : /dd:c:\%DEST_PATH% :: Destination Dir

Search Engine Optimization Reference v.01, October 4, 2010 There are hundreds if not thousands of references regarding website search engine optimization. I have opted to compile and maintain my own core reference which will be used as the "base" recommendation for websites on which I work. General Techniques

Some I wrote up quickly to throw a sequential list of all the tabs (pages) of a Microsoft Visio document into a Shape (e.g. table of contents). Create your overview page Drop a shape onto the canvas Open the shape

Helpful Sql Scripts for Ektron CMS 400.Net A compilation of various SQL scripts I have acquired, modified or written myself to perform various tasks not possible through the workarea (at least as of 8.0). Disclaimer if you are downloading and

Ektron has a snazzy plug-in framework that allows developers to write applications that hook directly into the CMS event model, thereby allowing us to create our own logic that is handled inline, alongside, within the CMS's.

If you have installed the Ektron Developer SDK as part of your core platform installation, this service will run automatically and has a couple of default plug-ins (Google, etc.) that run after installation.

The problem is that out of the box, these modules are not configured, so every time someone does anything in the work area that causes the plug-ins to fire, you may get errors.

I have decided to consolidate various how-to's on configuringApacheIIS

andto run on the same machine but on different IP addresses.

While setting up another client esync configuration tonight we ran into the following error. It appears right after you click to add an esync relationship, before getting references to any local security cerficates in the drop down The communication object,

I ran into an interesting situation this evening while prototyping an Ektron upgrade for a client. After running the site upgrade utility on my local instance, the DB upgrade portion of the upgrade process failed miserably. A slew of pop

Anyone that uses Firefox as their default web browser and has the NoScript add on enabled (if you don't I would highly recommend that you install it post haste) can attest to the terrible implementations of web sites that do

Use the following methods to put an IIS web site into off line or maintenance mode. App_Offline.htm Static Override Page (prefered) Adding a file in the application root named App_Offline.htm automatically causes the AppDomain to recycle and modifies its behavior

This article explains how to enable SMTP authentication for outbound e mail in Microsoft Outlook. Open Microsoft Outlook 2007 From the ribbon menu click Tools | Account Settings… Click the E mail tab Select the account to be modified and

As one who is constantly having to deal with the web.config and on occasion the machine.config, I have found referencing the machine.config.comments indispensible. As such, I have decided to upload and host an accessible version the 2.0 configuration folder (C

Script to Start Stop All Running Ektron Services on Local Workstation Anyone that develops on Ektron knows just how resource intensive the locally run Windows services can be. After manually stopping and starting all three of them every time I

Last year I was approached by an old work associate buddy who needed someone to program a basic photo display web component that he could use with a WordPress blog site he was designing. Since I am pretty decent at WordPress,

Web Page Layout A web page layout refers to the structural design of a web page being served up on the World Wide Web. There are various key sections or components that make up the core layout of a web

Ran into a situation with root IIS applications sites squatting sub applications' configuration (HttpModule's specifically). Here is how to disable the inheritance. <location inheritInChildApplications="false"> <system.web> ... < system.web> < location> SectionInformation.InheritInChildApplications Property

setup onload function if(typeof window.addEventListener = 'undefined') .. gecko, safari, konqueror and standard window.addEventListener('load', generic, false) else if(typeof document.addEventListener = 'undefined')

I can count on one hand how many times I have had to do this over the past few years, but each time it takes considerable effort to "reacall" how to replicate. Apparently, by default, Windows Media Player enables what's

Never provide your personal information when responding to an unsolicited email request, no matter how legitimate the communication may look. Whether by phone, email or internet site, data created by phishers may look like the real thing. If you

While prototyping a custom DMS asset handler today I managed to locate actual instructions on configuring your own QuickLink handlers for specific assets. However confusing it may be that these instructions were found in the “Users Manual”, I am just

How to convert .NET DateTime to UNIX timestamp (as in PHP, etc.)int timestamp = (DateTime.UtcNow new DateTime(1970,1,1,0,0,0)).TotalSecondsand convert a Unix timestamp to an ASP.NET DateTime value DateTime date = (new DateTime(1970,1,1,0,0,0)).AddSeconds(datestamp)

One of the greatest features of Flash is the ability to encode video for online playback. For those that have not done this, the quick notes version Create a blank Flash movie (somewhere near the dimensions of the source video)

I ran across an interesting API library deep in the Ektron API framework that allows you to pull the actual localization tag (e.g. en US, en GB, etc.) for the current language type id of the site (e.g. 1033, 2058,

I have used the service controller command line tool for years. I have finally decided to write something up on it briefly since I have been working with various frameworks systems that are not completely removing their services after uninstalling

I have been architecting, designing, and programming Ektron CMS400.NET web applications for over a year now. Though not an expert, I feel I am to the point I can actually add value to other programmers architects who may be running

I ran into an issue when migrating a SharePoint Wiki list from one site to another. In creating a Wiki list based on a saved template (with content) the default home document was broken or not being set. So the