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I recently re-formatted my laptop. For a while I was using the Visual Studio web server but then came a need for running my project through IIS. I set it all up in IIS, added my host entry to the host file then browsed to my site.

It turned out when I added IIS I missed some of the features. Make sure to add all of your .NET options when adding IIS.

Filed under: Web Development   Tags: .NET, IIS,
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Today I learned the hard way that your data isn’t always safe.

I created an Admin interface for one of my clients that basically manages an Image Gallery. The gallery allows for a Category and SubCategory structure.

I received a call at about 10:30am asking where all of his images were?  After doing some investigating, my heart stopped, I found the bug.

I had a bug in my SubCategory_Delete proc that didn’t have the WHERE SubCategoryId = @SubCategoryId clause. When a user would delete a SubCategory it would delete all the photos in the image gallery instead of just the photos in that specific SubCategory.

My initial thought was to get the backup.  Well it turns out backups aren’t created automatically.  This is something you need to manual do when creating a database.

I was fortunate enough to have a great Customer Service rep, Sean Fox, that somehow managed to convince MOSSO’s IT team to create a backup for me from their disaster recovery backups.  Thanks MOSSO.

So after first going to my client with my tail between my legs I was able to go back to him as a hero. “Your data has been saved!”

I’ve since put in place a backup plan for all of my databases hosted at MOSSO.  I found this article in their Knowledge Base: http://help.mosso.com/article.php?id=346 for MSSql. There is one for MySql, http://help.mosso.com/article.php?id=356.

I modified it a bit by creating a console app that is scheduled nightly and ran on my server.  This way only I can execute the backup.

My advice is to put this in place before you need it, not afterwards.

Filed under: Web Development   Tags: Best Practices, Hosting, MSSQL, Rackspace Cloud,
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Tonight I was trying to launch a site that had a contact form on it. I set the email to, to be sent to my email address for testing purposes.

I received this exception:

System.Net.Mail.SmtpException: Mailbox name not allowed. The server response was: sorry, your mail was administratively denied. (#5.7.1)

A little investigating, it looks like I can only send email to an email address of the same domain of the site. So I had to set it to send to the clients email, send him an email letting him know I was testing and to let me know if he received it.

Just another reason I can’t stand GoDaddy.

Filed under: Web Development   Tags: GoDaddy,
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After almost one year of being a business I finally have launched my site and blog. It is still a work in progress but I have the main content up.

What can you expect to read on my blog?
I’ll be blogging about how I run my business, tools I use, resources I reference, and other things I encounter. I’ll also be blogging about the technology I use and of course CODE. I hope to give everyone a better idea of what all I do.

Look for some great stuff to come!

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