How Do I Check That a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is Available?

Last Updated on Thursday, 29 November 2012 08:29 Written by David Bauernschmidt Saturday, 1 December 2012 12:00

The #1 way to speed up your website is to minimize HTTP requests, however; inevitably you will make request for images, audio, video, code, and other content. Whenever; you can off load some of the content to other domains or to other servers your site will always load faster. However; there will be times when those ‘other servers’ will be down. Whether it is just for a moment or for a longer period of time, you do not want your site to be at the mercy of those servers. What can you do? (Glad you asked). You can have the best of both worlds. Why not check to see if the ‘other’ server is available. If it is then use their servers to deliver your content. If not then just load your own content from your site. It is not that hard to do and takes about 3 more lines of code. You can use this for anything in particular. Just find the piece of code to check for.

I am giving you this example of the jQuery library and any library will do just replace the code with the syntax for their library.

How to Restart Application Pool in WebsitePanel

Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 November 2012 07:29 Written by Rodolfo Hernandez Wednesday, 28 November 2012 12:00

The Application pool enables the isolation of your web application for better security, reliability, and availability. In this article I will give a step by step guide on How to restart Application Pool in WebsitePanel

1. Sign into your WebsitePanel

2. Click on Websites:

How to Allow Access to Anonymous Users in Your ASP Application

Last Updated on Sunday, 11 November 2012 04:25 Written by Rodolfo Hernandez Wednesday, 14 November 2012 12:00

ASP application that requires authentication prevents anonymous or non authenticated users from accessing any page without proper authentication. This is a great feature, however if you have a page or pages within your asp application that you want to display to non authenticated users you won’t be able because of ASP Authentication restrictions. In this article I will give you a step by step guide on How to Allow/Deny access to Anonymous users in your ASP Application

Note: For the purposes of this guide, I will grant access to non authenticated to the ‘credits’ page of my ASP application.

1. Open the web.config file of your ASP application.

How to Encrypt Data Inside a web.config

Last Updated on Sunday, 11 November 2012 09:32 Written by David Bauernschmidt Sunday, 11 November 2012 12:00

Several weeks ago I was offered an opportunity to write articles for Arvixe. This is not only an exciting offer because of the vast number of people that will read it, but also because Arvixe is a great company. Their support has been impeccable and their desire to help has far exceeded my thoughts. (This is not because my thoughts are low).

My goal in writing articles is to provide an avenue that other developers can come to experience Arvixe in the way I am. Most of my how to articles will be around the Arvixe asp.net platform but most can be adjusted to accommodate other hosting providers. The great thing about development is that there are many ways to accomplish the same task.

Someone once asked me this question, “David, what is the best way to implement {fill in the blank}”. To which my response was, “Yes”. As you read my articles if you have a different way than just drop me a note. After all this is how we learn. So here goes the first one……

Before we get to the specific example, let me say, that Googling, Yahooing, Binging (is that a word?) will return many options so this not the only one, it is the one that I find is the most versatile. It can be used for many things.

How to Set a Machine Key to Your Custom ASP Application

Last Updated on Tuesday, 6 November 2012 08:30 Written by Rodolfo Hernandez Tuesday, 6 November 2012 12:00

Machine key is used for authentication and security in ASP. If you have an asp application that requires login, you must set the Machine Key for security and to avoid a viewstate validation error. A viewstate validation error will log off any user connected to your application even if you set a 8 hours timeout. For that reason, In this article I will give a step by step guide on how to set a Machine Key to your ASP Application

The Machine Key <machineKey> element helps to control tamper proofing and encryption of ViewState, forms authentication tickets, and role cookies. Instead of creating a complicated function, we will use a tool to generate random machine keys.

1. Go to this address and get a random machine key. It should look like this: