Archives
-
Production Database Migration
I thought I'd share my experience with moving a heavily used production database for a live website from one server to another this weekend. The database in question is used to support AspAlliance.com, but since it has been around for a long time, and since getting additional databases has not always been easy or free, there are several other sites that rely on this same database. Additionally, on AspAlliance.com there are a large number of individual ASP and ASP.NET applications, many of which store their connection string information locally. I'm still not 100% done tracking down all the apps that need updated, but the important ones are done.
-
Evolving Custom Web Controls
Although sometimes you start out knowing you need a custom control, what more often happens is you find that you're using the same functionality in more than one place, so you start packaging it up into a control in order to remove duplication and improve reusability. This article takes a look at when and how you should do such things by taking a fairly simple piece of ASP.NET functionality and evolving it from some code on a form to a user control to a fully-functional custom web control.
-
Newsgator Activation
Ok, so I got newsgator last week (http://weblogs.asp.net/ssmith/posts/41415.aspx) and today was the first day since then that I actually rebooted my machine and got the nag prompt to activate it when I started Outlook. So, having become enthralled with the product, I decided what the heck and spent the $29 to buy it. Got my activation key in an email a few minutes later, life was good, I clicked on NewsGator in Outlook and went to find the Activate link.
-
Newsgator 1.3
I've never used Newsgator before but since I just redid the RSS feed on AspAlliance.com I thought I should give it a shot and see how it works (I've also only recently gone to Outlook from Outlook Express (see past archives for my thoughts on the switch)). I have to say I really like it and am starting to subscribe to a bunch of blogs that previously I would manually periodically check with my browser (I know, how archaic is THAT). So now, that thing on the side of my blog that says 'Blogs I Read' will actually be a bit more accurate, since I'll get notified of new posts to those blogs in semi-realtime.
-
AspAlliance.com RSS Is Back
After a couple of months of downtime, AspAlliance.com's RSS Feed has returned and is better than ever. Thanks to Scott Mitchell for his cool MSDN article on building an RSS feed.