CodeCarnage

Firefox 3.5 Released!

webmaster.nospam@nospam.codecarnage.com (sbumbaugh) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:57:00 -0700

Firefox 3.5 has just been released. Click the banner below to upgrade your internet browser if you haven't already.

View some of the new & improved features.

Speed Up Filezilla

webmaster.nospam@nospam.codecarnage.com (sbumbaugh) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:41:00 -0700

Filezilla is a great, open source, FTP client that I have been using for some time now. If you're undecided on an FTP client give it a try and download Filezilla. When using Filezilla for the first time I recommend tweaking the file transfer settings. Recently I had a couple co-workers new to Filezilla mention to me that file transfers were slow and taking a long time. After taking a look I realized the default Filezilla file transfer settings were the culprit.

By default Filezilla is configured to support only one simultaneous file transfer. On anything except the slowest connection this is going to be unneccesarily slow when transfering multiple files, particularly when those are small files that are not saturating your connection. To adjust this setting, go to the Filezilla menu bar and select:

Edit --> Settings --> Transfers

and set "Maximum simultaneous transfers" to something higher than one. I work on a very fast network and always set this to the maximum value of ten.

So, if you're using Filezilla nad can't figure out why transfers are taking so long or why you can only transfer one file at a time, there's a good chance that you're only configured to transfer one file at a time.

Configuring Google Sites for Another Domain

webmaster.nospam@nospam.codecarnage.com (sbumbaugh) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:22:00 -0700

One nice feature of Google Sites is that the site can be configured to serve content from any subdomain. For an overview of Google Sites, check out my previous post, an Introduction to Google Sites. Although CNAME records (subdomains) can be mapped to the site, A records (hostnames) cannot be mapped.

Configuring a subdomain to use with Google Sites is a simple process. Below I will provide a guide for performing this configuration when using GoDaddy as a domain registrar. If you are using another registrar the process should be similiar.

Domain Manager

Begin by accessing GoDaddy's Domain Manager. Locate the domain you would like to create your subdomain beneath. For me, I clicked on the domain lunchsummit.com.

Total DNS Control and MX Records

Select the option for "Total DNS Control and MX Records." This will allow you to make changes to your DNS settings and is organized by record type. The next step is to add a new CNAME Record by clicking the button, "Add new CNAME Record." For my site, salsafest.lunchsummit.com I created two alias names, salsafest and www.salsafest:

salsafest.lunchsummit.com

Host (Alias Name): salsafest
Points To: ghs.google.com
TTL: 1 hour

www.salsafest.lunchsummit.com

Host (Alias Name): www.salsafest
Points To: ghs.google.com
TTL: 1 hour

Configure Google Sites

Once DNS is configured, Google Sites needs to be configured as well. Make sure you're logged in to Google Sites and select:

Site Settings --> Other Stuff --> Web Address

Once on the Web Address page, add the web address(es) you just configured in DNS. For me, I entered the following:

salsafest.lunchsummit.com
www.salsafest.lunchsummit.com

Summary

Once everything is configured it may take a little time before the changes take effect.

For more information on this topic, see the Google Sites Help article, Changing the site URL for sites created under sites.google.com/site.

Introduction to Google Sites

webmaster.nospam@nospam.codecarnage.com (sbumbaugh) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:35:00 -0700

I've been playing with Google Sites recently and found it to be a really nice site building tool, or at least a nice way to rapidly prototype a site. Site architects are constrained to the toolsets provided; however, you can harness the power of Google's Gadgets as well as other Google Apps that integrate with Google Sites.

With relatively little effort I was able to create a personal site, salsafest.lunchsummit.com, using Google Sites. In just a few hours I had familiarized myself enough with the tool to create a decent site framework. Now, this site is not going to win any awards, but it was perfect for sharing with friends.

Some of the limitations and shortcomings I encountered include the following:

No Google AdSense support.
No scripting - there is no way to embed JavaScript into a page.
Limited SEO control - there is limited control over page titles, but I did not find way to control keywords or descriptions.
No CSS control - while you can edit your site's "theme," it only allows limited control of predefined items on the page. There is no way to have or edit a custom CSS file.
Quirky controls - some of the controls I worked with wouldn't always behave as expected.

Here are some of the features that proved useful:

Custom site domain - it is a simple and straightforward process for serving your site from a personalized subdomain.
Custom page name - there is full control over page names which can help boost SEO
Automatic sitemaps - Google Sites automatically generates a dynamic sitemap XML document for search engines as well as a user sitemap page.
Analytics support - it is simple to add Google Analytics tracking to sites.
Webmaster Tools - Google Webmaster Tools are also easily added to sites.
Docs - Google Docs integrate with Google Sites as well, the Google Spreadsheet Forms are particularly useful for building things like contact forms.
Calendar - it is easy to integrate calendars using Google Calendars.
ACL - limited access level control is also available, other Google Apps users can be added to the site as viewers, contributors or owners. Additionally the site can be private or public.
Gadgets - there are a bunch of built-in official gadgets at hand that offer basic functionality such as adding text boxes, links, images, etc. There are also gadgets that provide list capabilities with sorting, tables of contents, slideshows, etc.

All in all I would say Google Sites offers a lot of power and functionality for sites that don't need to have a ton of polish, not to mention the price is right (it's free). If you're building a non-commercial or personal website then give Google Sites a look. It shouldn't take a significant time investment to figure out whether or not it meets your needs. I'll try to post updates on some of the individual components of Google Sites in the future.

BlogEngine.NET ArgumentOutOfRangeException for RSS

webmaster.nospam@nospam.codecarnage.com (sbumbaugh) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 10:08:00 -0700

I can't seem to replicate this error again, but yesterday I was receiving an ArgumentOutOfRangeException error when clicking the the RSS subscription link on www.stevebumbaugh.com. After searching the web I found some information that implied there may have been time descrepencies between either my laptop (where I develop my site), the server (hosted somewhere at GoDaddy) or BlogEngine.NET. Adjusting the "Server time offset" on the BlogEngine.NET settings page fixed my issue (it was an hour off from our last time change in the fall).

I'll update this post with more information if I encounter this issue again or find more information on the topic, but for now I am unable to replicate the issue.

Update

This is still an issue that I am having with my site, http://www.stevebumbaugh.com/me/syndication.axd. So, for now I am just fine tuning the server offset time, by setting to zero. Unfortunately it's annoying to have to keep adjusting it back and forth in order to keep accurate local time on the site.

Here is the full stack trace:

[ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Specified argument was out of the range of valid values.
Parameter name: utcDate]
   System.Web.HttpCachePolicy.UtcSetLastModified(DateTime utcDate) +3352787
   System.Web.HttpCachePolicy.SetLastModified(DateTime date) +47
   BlogEngine.Core.Utils.SetConditionalGetHeaders(DateTime date) in Utils.cs:129
   BlogEngine.Core.Web.HttpHandlers.SyndicationHandler.SetHeaderInformation(HttpContext context, List`1 items, SyndicationFormat format) in SyndicationHandler.cs:293
   BlogEngine.Core.Web.HttpHandlers.SyndicationHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) in SyndicationHandler.cs:65
   System.Web.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +358
   System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +64

BlogEngine.NET Disappearing Page Slug

webmaster.nospam@nospam.codecarnage.com (sbumbaugh) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:11:00 -0700

Problem Background

While working on my blog at www.stevebumbaugh.com I have come across with the MySQL implementation of BlogEngine.NET. It is possible to create a page and set a custom slug that is different than the title. When working on a post with a custom slug everything seems to work as expected. Unfortuantely when I would come back to the page at a later time, the custom URL would change, resulting in a 404, page not found error. Editing the page would reveal that the custom slug had reverted back to the default slug for the page.

Slugs

In BlogEngine.NET the slug can be used to define the page name. For instance, when viewing this post, the slug is blogenginenet-disappearing-page-slug. This allows the administrator to control page names for posts and custom pages. This can also help with search engine optimization. Unfortunately this functionality is not implemented for custom pages (it does not affect posts) created when using a database implementation instead of XML implementation of BlogEngine.NET.

The database table be_Pages does not contain a field for slugs as would be expected. A look at the source code also confirms this, the database provider implementation BlogEngine.Core.Providers.DbBlogProvider.InsertPage(Page page) ignores the Slug property of the Page object. In contrast, XML provider BlogEngine.Core.Providers.XmlBlogProvider.InsertPage(Page page), does appear to save the slug; although, I have not tested this functionality.

Conclusion

There is currently not a way to set custom page slugs in BlogEngine.NET when using MySQL. When the custom slug is saved it seems to be cached in memory. Once that cache expires the custom slug is lost because it has no way to be persisted to the database. This is not really a big deal for me because I did not need a custom page name, but it did cause some confusion. Updating the code to store the slug doesn't seem like it would take too much effort if there really was a need to do so.

Environment

GoDaddy Deluxe Hosting Plan (ASP.NET medium trust environment, IIS7, .NET 3.5)
MySQL 5
BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5

CodeCarnage First Month Milestone - Visitors from 19 Countries

webmaster.nospam@nospam.codecarnage.com (sbumbaugh) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:07:00 -0700

Well, I must say, I am extremely happy with how well the blog has done since it launched a month ago tomorrow. In particular, my first post has driven a lot of traffic from Google and some people have been kind enough to leave comments thanking me for the help I provided. You're welcome.

Here's how the stats break down from Google Analytics for the first month:

October 26, 2008 - November 25, 2008

687 Pageviews

147 Visits

19 Countries

16 States

When I started, I didn't think I would get much traffic outside of the Toledo/Northwest Ohio region. All I can say is, Google is an amazing tool and I was quite surprised (and excited) when I started getting visits outside of the US.

Tracking Images with Thickbox and Google Analytics

webmaster.nospam@nospam.codecarnage.com (sbumbaugh) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:12:00 -0700

ThickBox is a nice tool for creating an image gallery, but there is no way for Google Analytics to automatically track the images viewed. If using Google Analytics, one solution is to modify ThickBox to call a function that registers the image click using the Google Analytics Tracking API.

For more information on configuring ThickBox, see my previous post Configuring jQuery and Thickbox with BlogEngine.NET.

Add Tracking Function to Page

First, add a function to your page template that calls the Google Analytics _trackPageview function. This needs to be located within the page, after the Google Analytics initialization (var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("xxx");). This will provide a callback function that ThickBox can use to track ThickBoxed image gallery clicks.

    //<![CDATA[
    function trackThickbox(caption, url, imageGroup) {
        try {
            pageTracker._trackPageview(url);
        } catch (e) { }
    }
    //]]>
</script>

Add Callback to Thickbox.js

Next, locate the tb_show function within the thickbox.js file. Add a callback to the trackThickbox() function that was just added to the page template.

function tb_show(caption, url, imageGroup) {
    try {
        if (trackThickbox) {
            trackThickbox(caption, url, imageGroup);
        }
    } catch (e) { }

   ...
}

Summary

These relatively simple updates allow sites to track image clicks via Google Analytics and ThickBox. There is an example of this in action at www.stevebumbaugh.com. In addition to Google Analytics this solution could probably be used with other web analytic suites that allow custom page tracking. To implement tracking with another web analytics suite, the trackThickbox function would need to be reimplemented with whatever API call is specific to that suite. There are probably other ways to achieve this as well, but no simplier solutions come to mind. Any alternative suggestions or improvements are welcome.

Configuring jQuery and Thickbox with BlogEngine.NET

webmaster.nospam@nospam.codecarnage.com (sbumbaugh) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:56:00 -0700

Over on my blog at www.stevebumbaugh.com I wanted to create a nice Web 2.0 image gallery using ThickBox, which is dependent on the jQuery JavaScript Library. Additionally I wanted to have jQuery configured as it is very handy and only a matter of time before I needed it. I've been using it for about a year now and feel lost without it. It's both a powerful and lightweight JavaScript library that seems to have steadily gained popularity since it was released in 2006. Apparently Microsoft and Nokia have recognized the power of jQuery as well, they are both moving to make jQuery part of their upcoming development platforms that include Microsoft's Visual Studio and Nokia's Web Run-Time.

Environment

Configuring jQuery 1.2.6

jQuery is simple enough to install if there are not any conflicting JavaScript libraries configured. To install, download the file jquery-1.2.6.js from jquery.com, add it to your project and add a script reference to the <head/> section of the site. For BlogEngine.NET add the script reference to the site.master file for the current theme. For this site, that reference looks like the following:

If jQuery is working properly an alert box will display, stating this fact once the page loads. This test will fail when using BlogEngine.NET because there is another JavaScript library in place that is interfering with the jQuery variable '$'. In FireFox 3 the error message reads, "$ is not defined," in Internet Explorer 7 the message reads, "Object expected." This can be resolved by reassigning the jQuery variable by placing the following code beneath the jQuery script reference:

Now, update the test code to use the new jQuery variable '$j':

Now jQuery should be configured and the test code above should display the test message.

Configuring ThickBox 3.1

ThickBox is a Lightbox clone that is built using jQuery. Both can be used to display modal style windows containing images, but Thickbox can also display inline html content, iframed content and AJAX content. It is also very lightweight coming in around 10k compressed.

To install ThickBox, download the thickbox.js, the thickbox.css and the loadingAnimation.gif. Next, add thickbox.js and thickbox.css references to the <head/> section of the site.master file. Make sure the thickbox.js <script> block follows the <script> block for jQuery as well as the jQuery.noConflict(); inline script call:

Open thickbox.js and adjust the variable tb_pathToImage to the path to loadingAnimation.gif. Since the default jQuery variable '$' has been replaced with '$j' the thickbox.js source needs to be updated to reflect this. All the jQuery references '$' in the thickbox.js file need to be updated to '$j'. Careful not to blindly replace all '$' with '$j' in the file though. There is a regular expression contained within the file that will break if it is modified:

var urlString = /\.jpg$|\.jpeg$|\.png$|\.gif$|\.bmp$/;

A global replace of '$(' with '$j(' should safely update the jQuery variable without overwriting the regular expression. The modified file should look like this: thickbox.js.

Additionally, there is a conflict between the thickbox.css file and the style.css file within the BlogEngine.NET theme. Using Firebug I was able to determine that the first line of thickbox.css was causing the problem. Commenting it out resolves the problem:

/* *{padding: 0; margin: 0;} */

The modified file should look like this: thickbox.css.

Summary

As expected when using multiple, interdependent technologies there are integration challenges to overcome or work around. Having previous experience setting up jQuery and ThickBox was invaluable to me when configuring it to work here and made it pretty simple. Hopefully this post will help people not as familiar with these technologies get jQuery and/or ThickBox up and running with BlogEngine.NET. I hope to put them to good use soon, but for now you can see the photo gallery that started this project at www.stevebumbaugh.com.

jQuery News

More information on jQuery, Microsoft and Nokia:

jQuery, Microsoft, and Nokia (jQuery Blog)
jQuery and Microsoft (ScottGu's Blog)

Missing Google AdSense Ads

webmaster.nospam@nospam.codecarnage.com (sbumbaugh) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:46:00 -0700

As you've probably noticed, I'm using Google AdSense service to place ads on this blog. Recently I decided to place a row of ads at the bottom of each post and some, but not all, of the ads on my home page disappeared. Interestingly there were not any missing ads on other pages. I also checked the AdSense Site Diagnostics and there were not any blocked URL's listed. After a quick search of the AdSense Help I determined my home page was exceeding the maximum number of ads per page. So, for now, I've removed the ads that were appended to the posts.