Nathanael Jones » Uncategorized

Merging ComputerLinguist.com

Nathanael Jones — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:39:33 +0000

In August 2008 I started a separate blog, ComputerLinguist.com. At the time, I felt that it was best to keep my ASP.NET writings separate from the rest.

Dynamic languages were still heresy among many programming circles, and my articles on general programming were definitely targeted towards a different audience. However, since Microsoft has released the DLR and publicly embraced dynamic languages, much of the FUD they originally (maybe unintentionally) encouraged has been displaced from people’s minds. I don’t see any reason to keep the blogs separate anymore.

I plan on merging the content soon, shortly after I get the comment situation worked out. My previous CMS used IntenseDebate for commenting, but I’m having trouble getting the IntenseDebate plugin to run on wordpress, so it make take a while.

Image Resizer – Configuring IIS

Nathanael Jones — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:04:03 +0000

Using IIS7 Integrated mode or the Visual Studio web server? You can skip this step.

Installing on IIS 5 & IIS 6

For the module to operate properly, we must configure IIS to pass all requests to the ASP.NET runtime. By default IIS serves these files itself.

1) Open IIS, right-click on your web site, and choose properties.

2) Click the “Home Directory” tab, then “Configuration”

3) For a wildcard mapping on IIS 5, add extension “.*”. For IIS 6, choose “Insert” and add the aspnet_isapi.dll executable %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll inside the wildcard applications maps area. For both IIS 5 and 6, make sure “Script Engine” is checked. “Verify file exists” will need to be unchecked if you plan to do any URL rewriting, but should be left checked if you are using the default documents feature of IIS. (URL rewriting with the UrlRewriting.Net library provides much more power than IIS default documents. I highly recommend it).

Note: For 64-bit installs, use “%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll”. The most reliable way to determine the path of aspnet_isapi.dll is to copy it from the .aspx mapping. You have to use the right-click menus – the keyboard shortcuts don’t work.

Installing on IIS 7 classic mode

IIS 7 mode mappings are done in web.config. Do not add these if you are using IIS 7 Integrated mode (the default). You may get Server Unavailable on your image requests. None of the steps on this page are needed on IIS7 Integrated (default), and may actually cause problems.

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IIS7 Classic 64-bit

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Finding a hosted, private, wysiwyg wiki

Nathanael Jones — Thu, 01 May 2008 05:05:52 +0000

I’ve signed up for a couple dozen wikis in the last two weeks. In my spare time I’ve been trying to find a hosted wiki that meets our needs.
We need a private wiki with WYSWYG editing, 40+ user count, reasonably fast edit transitions, hierarchical organization of pages, and ad-free versions.

So far the only two that really impressed me were wetpaint.com and wik.is.

Wetpaint.com has a $20/mo ad-free version for non-profits they are beta testing, but be warned that this only removes the Google ads on the side. The wetpaint-sponsored ads at the bottom can’t be removed, although you can change their type by changing the ‘category’ of your wiki (try education for something safer).

Wetpaint has a fantastic AJAX editing interface, with edit transitions under 2 seconds on DSL – quite fantastic. Initial page loads are quick also. Very trim Javascript.

wik.is has a free and pro version, the primary difference being the alloted storage space. wik.is runs DekiWiki, created by the folks that made MediaWiki. DekiWiki is good stuff, although a little heaver on the javascript side, although I don’t think it would be too hard to lump and compress the javascript files. Going into edit mode takes 4+ seconds, and requires over a hundred HTTP requests – about 1.5 megabytes.

Both can either be private or public, and allow template choices. wik.is allows you to create your own templates and edit the site CSS. Both allow custom domains and site logos.

Since wik.is is $99/year for no ads, and wetpaint.com is $240/year for less ads, I think we’ll be going with wik.is.

Viawiki.com also hosts DekiWiki, and has a much faster editing version – give the demo a try. They license per user, though, so if you have a lot of people it can get a little pricey.

Site Launch

Nathanael Jones — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:16:04 +0000

You’ve got to start sometime. After launching a certain number of websites, launching your own can seem really, really boring.

Like watching grass grow. At least it doesn’t take long with the CMS I created.

I FTP’d the site up last night, then attached the database file and set the connection string during lunch break.

The part that took the longest was resetting my password in the CMS, since I’d forgotten it . The quickest way to is to run “Update aspnet_Membership SET Password=”pass” PasswordFormat=0″ to reset all passwords to “pass”.

There’s only a few non-typical requirements:

Obviously ASP.NET needs wildcard mapping set up, so all URLs go to ASP.NET. The hosting provider has to map “*” to “aspnet_isapi.dll”

The application needs write access to the local file system, but only if you want to have online editing ability. This
is controlled at two levels – the filesystem (permissions for Network Service), and the asp.net trust level (machine.config)