Peter Viola's Blog

Microsoft's free SQL Server Express is the perfect relational database for any one on a budget. With a 1 CPU limit and 10 GB database size limit it is more than capable of handling the average user's needs. SQL Server 2012 has been out for a while and upgrading from a legacy version couldn't be easier. Here's a recent blog post I did on upgrading from SQL Server 2008 Express to SQL Server 2012 Express:

When you need quick analysis of your traffic logs you won’t find an better tool than Microsoft’s free Log Parser. With Log Parser you can read a variety of log files including the Registry and Windows event logs. It’s ease of use comes from using SQL queries against your log file. You can get your data even faster by using multiple log parser queries in a batch file.

Thanks to the Web Platform Installer deploying a site with Wordpress and MySQL is a breeze.  There are a few tools to maintain your MySQL databases and MySQL Workbench is an obvious choice. However if you are working remotely and only have access to a web browser then a free tool called phpMyAdmin is great solution.

Redirecting visitors on your site from one page to another is handled by using either a 301 redirect or a 302 redirect. The numbers 301 and 302 refer to the http status code that is returned by the web server to your browser. They may seem similar but they are quite different. A 302 indicates a temporary change and a 301 indicates a permanent change. This difference is important to understand and will impact how search engines see content changes on your site. There are a number of ways to implement a 301 redirect on your web site. Some are easier than others to configure and will depend on the version of IIS you are using. Here’s the story of how I recently had to use the global.asax and Application_BeginRequest to do a 301 redirect.

Server Core for Windows Server 2012 offers a low-maintenance, limited functionality operating system. The primary benefits of Server Core are Reduced Servicing, Reduced Management, and Reduced attack surface. Management of Server Core is performed locally or remotely using Windows PowerShell, a terminal server connection from a command line or by using the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). There are many server roles available for Server Core instances such as Active Directory, DHCP Server, DNS Server, File Services, BITS Server, HyperV, Printing Services, and IIS, just to name a few. Here is a list of more Server Core roles that are available. This walkthrough will focus on installing IIS 8.

FTP User Isolation is a great way to lock down your FTP site and prevent users from accessing resources they are not supposed to. Regardless if your server is providing shared hosting or dedicated hosting, FTP User Isolation can be leveraged for greater FTP security. It is particularly beneficial in hosting environments when you have a limited number of IP addresses to utilize but have several users requiring FTP access. In this case you’ll want to create 1 master FTP site and configure user virtual directories. Alternatively if your web server has several IP addresses available then one will typically deploy FTP Publishing on each site being hosted using a dedicated IP address. FTP user isolation in this case is not as critical but can still be implemented if you need multiple users accessing different folders on the same site.

Remote Management for IIS 8 on Windows Server 2012 is a great way to connect to your site and accessing IIS features without logging in to the server.  It is straight forward to configure but requires a few steps to get working properly. An alternative scenario would be if you are using a 3rd party for Windows shared hosting and you do not have administrative access to the server. You could then use IIS Manager for Remote Administration on your PC to connect to the site and maintain it.

In 2011 the FTP protocol had it’s 40 birthday. Despite it’s age it is still a widely used file transfer technology however it wasn’t originally designed for encryption. It has been shown to be vulnerable to brute force attacks, packet capture, and spoof attacks as well as a few other attack vectors. Now with IIS 8 on Windows Server 2012 encrypting an FTP session has never been easier. Using the IIS Manager with just a few clicks you can enable FTPS also known as FTP Over SSL on your site and take advantage of encrypted communication. In this walkthrough I am going to configure FTPS on IIS 8 using my personal SSL certificate which I obtained from a 3rd party SSL vendor. I am not going to cover how to install an SSL certificate. To get started launch IIS Manager from the Start Screen.