Windows Web Hosting, Web Technologies, etc
jcoburn
Experienced as a Web Developer and Web Server administrator since 1994, in 1999 Jess set out to start a Web Hosting Provider that would leverage the latest in cutting edge and innovative technologies and make them available to businesses in a way that was easy to understand, easy to use and affordable. Today Applied Innovations is a recognized leader in Windows Hosting and specializes in ASP.NET, E-Commerce and Advanced Web Application Hosting.
Homepage: http://www.jesscoburn.com
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Posts by jcoburn
Quickly backup iis metabase on a Windows Cloud Server
Dec 22nd
Recently, I was invited to give a presentation at the Orlando DotNetNuke Usersgroup around DotNetNuke website performance. The first tidbit of information I provided was that when you’re running on a Windows Cloud Server or Windows VPS Server or a Managed Windows Server, you always to make backups of your configuration before making sweeping changes. The quickest way to backup the IIS Metabase is via command line:
Backing up the IIS Configuration via Command Line:
%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe add backup “RUTROH”
This runs the appcmd command that allows you completely manage the IIS configuration from commandline. and create a new backup called “RutRoh” (Just like scooby doo and when you need this backup the first thing you’re going to say is .. RUT ROH!
Restoring the IIS Configuration via Command Line:
Assuming your backup is named RUTROH you’ll execute the following:
%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe restore backup “RUTROH”
What if you don’t know which backup you want to restore? Then you can list your backups with the command:
%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list backup
and then restore the appropriate backup.
What if I didn’t make a backup of my IIS Configuration? Am I stuck?
The good news is that in Windows Server 2008 and above IIS has a configuration history and automatically checks for configuration changes every 2 minutes and stores the last 10 backups for you AUTOMATICALLY in the c:\inetpub\history folder so there’s a good chance you have a backup already anyway. To restore one of those backups you just copy the applicationhost.config file from one of the backups over the top of your existing applicationhost.config file (I always make a copy of the current applicationhost.config file before replacing it, just in case!)
If you want to learn more about this feature and even how to increase the number of histories/backups it keeps visit: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/129/using-iis-configuration-history
Now it’s your turn
So there you have, a quick 2 minute introduction on how to backup and restore your IIS configuration quickly and how to restore your IIS configuration even if you didn’t make a backup yourself (because IIS did it for you). If this blog article helped you, I’d love it if you left a comment and even tweeted the article.
Instantly get a 40% performance boost in your PHP applications!
Oct 13th
For years now I’ve been spreading the word about how great PHP runs on Windows. In fact, my own blog runs on PHP on Windows. It also amazes me today the amount of closed minded individuals out there with established misconceptions around how PHP runs on Windows. This really all dates back to the early days when PHP and ASP would battle it and when Microsoft’s stand was “Why would you ever use PHP when you have ASP.NET available?” A few years ago Microsoft woke up and decided “if you can’t beat them join them” and began working with Zend.com to make PHP performance on Windows be on par with that on Linux. In my personal (albeit modestly biased) opinion, we’re there!
Today while reviewing my daily RSS feeds I came across a great blog post by Brian Swan “Why is PHP 5.3 on Windows faster than previous versions?”
That really lays out just why PHP 5.3 is faster:
- They moved to Visual C compiler 9 (a modern C compiler for windows) from Visual C compiler 6 (something developed 10 years ago and can probably be called a artifact of an ancient civilization in computer time).
- They moved from the POSIX API to the Win32 API: Native == Good!
- They rebuilt the core extensions / libraries. These were all reworked from the ground up to make sure they were optimized.
Now those are just the changes in PHP itself and by themselves they sound pretty good, no? But that’s just the changes in PHP core! Let’s look at IIS7 and what’s happening there:
- We got the FastCGI implementation for IIS – allowing us to execute CGI based programs much faster by reusing a single process over and over for each call of a PHP application instead of having to spin up a new thread every single time the app is called.
- We got WinCACHE – Providing us a PHP caching engine allowing us to cache PHP bytecode, the compiled version of a PHP script, in memory.
- Then we got IIS7 itself, Microsoft’s fastest web server today and argubly one of the fastest web servers available today.
So if you’re one of these guys that has drank the same old instant coffee crystals for years “Run PHP on Linux, ASP on Windows and never mix the two” then it’s time to walk over to the Kuerig and drop a pod in and savor the flavor of what modern technology has to offer. Oh and after you brew that cup of coffee, load a PHP application on Windows. Here’s a coupon to get you 6 months of PHP optimized Windows hosting, for free!
Kaltura Test Video
May 11th
One of the things I’ve been looking at recently is the kaltura.org open source video platform. Below is a test video from that platform.
Comment Spam Protection … in the cloud from cloudflare!
Mar 28th
Comment Spam Sucks
So anyone that has a blog, builds the blog to start a conversation. The conversation is generally in the comments. There’s nothing like knowing that someone not only found your blog post to be helpful but they took the time to say thank you and post a comment.
But what sucks is to get all excited that you got a comment and then find out it’s some guy trying to build links back to his site that sells ED pills!
I’ve tested out a number of different plugins and services that help protect against spam and they help but none of them seem to be really effective. It’s the classic cat and mouse game, I move here and block you, you move there and get around my block.
Recently I stumbled upon a completely different approach that I believe solves that problem and not only makes your site more secure but will speed it up too!
Fighting Comment Spam in the Cloud
The solution I’m talking about is CloudFlare.com. You can visit their website to see what they do and how. In a nutshell, they’ve created a content delivery network (CDN) and added to it a web application firewall that blocks attacks. The beauty here is three-fold:
- First they provide caching, compression and optimization of your static content. They then serve this content from a CDN network where this content may come from a network connection that’s closer to your web visitors network resulting in faster site performance! (mind you this is FREE too!)
- Second, they protect you. They block known spammers, bots and bad guys. They block cross site scripting attacks and common vulnerabilities and generally make you safer.
- Next, by keeping these bots from spidering your site and by serving this static content from their cache instead of your webserver they actually increase overall website load times and end user experience!
I believe CloudFlare will soon be known as a killer cloud app! I think it’s still fairly young and new and it’s had a couple hiccups since I’ve started using it but I think this is a great idea and I’d encourage you to check it out for your own sites. This includes forums and boards, blogs and even regular websites.
Here’s a few Screenshots to see what it does
Here’s what my dashboard looks like
Here’s what the Threat Control Panel looks like
Oh look some spammer left me a message.. Let’s see what he had to say
“Nice” indeed my spammy little Sri Lankan friend, Nice indeed!
BTW, you’ll notice you can put your own blocks in there, country, IP, IP range. That’s pretty handy and it’s nice to offload that blocking from the web servers too!
