free geoip May 2006 - Jayson's Blog - jaysonKnight.com
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May 2006 - Jayson's Blog

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  • CS Tidbits #3: Reindex Your Database

    Today's tidbit actually is something you can (and should) do to any database on a fairly regular basis:  Rebuild all of the indexes in your SQL Server database.  For those of you not familiar with indexes in SQL Server and how they work, they basically exist to improve the performance of your SQL Server databases; conceptually they are similar to indexes in a book in that they speed up the amount of time it takes the database engine to locate data.

    The Telligent developers have been kind enough to define all of the indexes you should need, however as your database grows the indexes can get cluttered and slow down the overall performance (sometimes drastically) of your CS application.  The busier the site, the faster this happens.  I've attached a SQL script you can run that will rebuild all of the indexes in a given database.  You can either run it manually or set it up as a SQL Server job to run on a regular basis.  For small single user sites, the need to reindex is minimal...but for large sites you probably would want to run this on a weekly basis, and of course during a time that your CS website is least trafficked as reindexing will incur quite a bit of overhead.
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  • CS Tidbits #7: More Compression Options

    [update] It turns out there is an issue with this mod...Gallery thumbnails are not being displayed.  Only thumbnails are affected, everything else in the Gallery applications displays fine.  I'll have a fix posted shortly. [/update]

    I posted earlier about enabling IIS compression to get some great performance benefits from your Community Server site.  Of course not everyone has this option, especially folks who cohost their CS sites.  So I set out to either A) write a CSModule that compresses content, B) write an HttpModule that compresses content or C) find a pre-built library that already does this.  C turned out to be the easiest option as it turns out the good folks over IC#Code have already done this.

    First off you'll need to download the source code and samples.  In that archive you'll see a folder called HttpCompressionModule.  If you have Visual Studio you can compile it yourself, if not I've attached a pre-built binary to this post that you can use (NOTE: there is a dependancy on SharpZipLib.dll as well...it's already pre-built in the download archive, but I'm attaching it to this post as well).  Just drop them in your /bin folder and then merge the attached web.config file into your CS web.config and you'll be good to go.

    The library supports both gzip and deflate compression, which all major browsers support...deflate uses less server resources, but gzip gets about a 5% compression benefit over deflate (albeit at more resource usage).  I noticed about the same page size decrease on my site as enabling IIS compression, i.e. my main blog page went from around 70kb to under 15kb, which is pretty substantial and leads to much faster pageload times.
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  • Well That's A Bummer

    I’ve lived in my current apartment for two and a half years.  I love it…it’s absolutely perfect for me.  780 square feet of goodness located smack dab in the middle of downtown Charlotte.  Awesome view, can walk pretty much anywhere I need to get to, etc.  Unfortunately the building was bought by a mega-conglomerate a while back (and they absolutely suck by the way), so I knew it was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened:  They have informed me that my rent will be going up almost 40% come July 1st.  There is absolutely no way I’m going to pay that much for an apartment…I could find something cheaper in Manhattan if I had to.  So, it looks like I’ll be moving.  Again.  I hate moving.  The dog hates moving.  My stuff hates moving.  *sigh*
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  • First Week With My New Host

    ASPnix - Advanced Web Hosting ProviderWell, the migration to ASPNix is complete…the “fix” (if you can call it that) was to recompile my site under asp.net 1.1.  It’s worth mentioning that it was not and ASPNix issue; like most other hosting companies they run their asp.net 2.0 sites under medium trust, and Telligent dropped the ball a bit when it comes to Community Server running under medium trust (i.e. there’s a bit that wasn’t coded around medium trust), plus I have quite a few extra assemblies in my /bin that just don’t like asp.net 2.0 very much, so I’m cool with 1.1 for now.

    On to the good stuff.  In a nutshell, ASPNix rocks!  I cannot believe the amount of stuff you get for less than 8 bucks a month.  Support has been speedy and great.  They also have port 1433 so you can connect remotely to your db’s with your tool of choice instead of having to use some lame web frontend which is a huge plus.  The web admin tools they do have in place are good all around (they use the SmarterTools suite of applications); I’m most impressed with SmarterStats which kicks the snot out of StatCounter and Google Analytics.  So if you’re unhappy with your current hoster, or just need a change, I highly recommend these guys.  Oh, and if you do sign up, drop my name so I can get a free month!

  • Yet Another SQL Server Management Studio Gripe

    I simply cannot believe all the issues I’m finding in SQL Server Management Studio (for other gripes see my SQL Server 2005 category).  The newest one is just plain dumb IMO (unless I’m doing something wrong).  Recently I needed to implement a quick and dirty trigger for a test on one of my SQL Server 2005 databases, so I fired up SSMS expecting there to be a context menu option when you right click a table (ala Enterprise Manager) to create it.  Nope, not there.  Alright fine, do it via raw DML statements in a query window…easy enough.  Execute the statement to create the trigger.  Now where the heck is it in object explorer?  Programmability/Database Triggers?  Not listed.  Server Objects/Triggers?  No way Jose, not there either.  The only way to find it is select * from sysobjects where xtype = ‘TR’, and even then there’s no way to modify it without explicitly dropping it/recreating it via DDL.  Perhaps my installation is mucked up somehow, but triggers are simply nowhere to be found in object explorer.  This is getting ridiculous.
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  • Moving Is Such A Pain In The Ass

    [update]Done. Done. And done. Details to follow.[/update]

    Not “moving” moving, but moving my site to a different host.  Yes it’s true…JK.com was down for a full 24 hours starting at around 3PM on Sunday (apologies to the 3 regular visitors I have).  I’m in the process of moving my site over to aspnix, and it hasn’t been as painless as I thought it would be…no doubt due to the number of mods I’ve made to my site.  Apparently my CS installation doesn’t play nice with asp.net 2.0 (though default installations work perfectly) due to medium trust issues, so I’ll have to recompile for 1.1 and hope for the best.  At this point I’m still sitting on my home server, but will be having another stab at it later on this evening.  Aside from the issues with my site, I’m quite impressed with aspnix…once I get my site humming on their servers I’ll post more about their offerings.

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  • Thus Begins Another Year

    As is commonplace amongst bloggers, for some reason I feel the need to announce my birthday.  Today begins my 29th trip around the sun (for those who are mathematically challenged, that means I’m now 28).  The past year has been a crazy one…regular readers will know that it’s all kind of denouement’d into a giant…hmm, what’s the word…well somewhat of a mess.  But it’s looking to be a controllable mess, and I think one way or another it’s gonna be all good.  Would love to post details but I just haven’t decided exactly how much to share yet.

    Regardless, I think number 28 will be a good one.  I certainly hope so.  No parties this year, just a quiet dinner with my family.  Which is fine by me.

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  • CS Tidbits #5: A Couple Of SEO Mods

    I figured I’d make today’s tidbit a 2 for Tuesday deal and post about a couple of ways to make your Community Server site even more search engine friendly.  CS out of the box is quite SEO, but there’s a couple of simple mods you can add to boost this even more.  The first is Scott Water’s Auto Name Your CS Posts CSModule.  By default (unless you specify the name of the post in the post editor) all CS posts are named as /archive/year/month/day/postID.aspx.  Most (if not all) major search engines would rather see keyword related content in the post title, which is exactly what his module does…if you were to have a post titled The World’s Greatest Post, the URL for that post would then become /archive/year/month/day/the_worlds_greatest_post.aspx.  Very SEO.

    The second mod is Dan Bartel’s Google Sitemap generator.  For anyone not familiar with what a Google Sitemap is, head over here for more information.  Basically it’s an XML file that the GoogleBot can parse to get a tree-like representation of your site, which makes it easier for Google to spider and thus can increase the visibility of your site.  To see this in action, have a look at my SiteMap Index here, and my blog’s SiteMap here.  As an added bonus, once you get your SiteMap up and running, the SiteMap admin page will give you some high level stats about how the GoogleBot is spidering your site (such as unreachable URL’s, timeouts, crawl stats, etc…very useful for site admins).  On a scale of 1–10 for must have CS add-ins, this one ranks about an 11.

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  • It Was Bound To Happen -- Dave Burke Joins The Telligenti

    I’ve been keeping up with Dave Burke since the early days of Community Server…he’s come up with some great mods/add-ins, plus he runs just about the most polite blog in the entire blogosphere which is always a nice touch.  About a month ago he lost his fulltime position with his firm, and I thought to myself “how long before Telligent starts knocking on his door.”  The correct answer is…well, about a month (give or take).  DB is officially the first Community Server Evangelist on the Telligent team, and well deserved at that.  Hopefully he’ll still have time to crank out some killer CS mods, and I’m absolutely certain he’s gonna rock this new position, I can’t think of a better fit.  Congratulations DB, and I look forward to seeing more of you around the forums/email threads/etc!

  • Best. Car. Ever.

    What has 16 cylinders, will do 0–60 in 2.5 seconds, hits over 250mph (400kmh), has 10 radiators, requires a special key to go over 230mph, and costs $1,250,000?  That would be the new(ish) Bugatti Veyron.  Simply unbelievable, and quite possibly the sexiest machine I’ve ever laid eyes on.  Make sure to read some of the reviews listed at the bottom of the Wiki link…they made me feel like a giddy school girl.  The most notable quote from the Wiki:

    “After the release of the car, it has become known that while each Veyron is being sold for £840,000, the production costs of the car are approximately £5 million per vehicle.”

    In other car news, I saw my first Ferrari Enzo this weekend.  I’m pretty sure driving either of these cars are about as much fun as you can possibly have with your clothes on.  I could probably go celibate for a shot at the Bugatti…

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