After a few years of developing sites using the Kentico CMS platform, I thought I would share some of the points/features that appeal to me the most. Here are just a few of the many reasons I believe Kentico is one of the best CMS products available today. [More]

Since 2007 Silverlight has been popping up on sites and become a powerful tool for dynamic, robust web development. More and more companies are deciding to deliver content using this technology to generate interactive and captivating web experiences. From an end user’s perspective it’s as simple as downloading a small plug-in (which now comes installed on Windows 7) and the web lights up. But what about developing for Silverlight? I’ll give you some first hand recounts of ups and downs of development using this new and emerging technology. [More]

Kentico CMS is a great platform for developing and maintaining content driven websites. The product is extremely feature rich and allows nearly unlimited customizations for users. One of the most powerful features is the ability to design/format HTML content directly within the tool. This is accomplished with Kentico’s integration with FCKEditor (Now known as CKEditor). The FCKEditor (CKEditor) is a feature rich WYSIWYG utility that allows users to design and implement content and adds in all the appropriate HTML coding. [More]

In my opinion SQL Server 2005 is a great database system. Building on its predecessors, it manages and maintains databases well and allows customization and flexibility for a company. In order to get the most out of it, you have to fully understand how it works and more importantly, how to configure it.

By default, every database you create in SQL Server 2005 is set to Full Recovery Mode. What this means is that the database will always log every bit of information to the end of time about the database, in case you need to restore in the event of a disaster. This functionality is great to have, but comes at a very high cost, namely in the form of log file sizes. SQL Server records every change to the database into the transaction log. Every INSERT, UPDATE, column modification, TRIGGER event. Everything. And in doing so, the log can grow as large as it wants, potentially causing catastrophic events to the server. [More]

With so many phones available these days, it’s hard to keep up with what’s available. Seems like every day phone companies are airing some ridiculous commercial with a phone dropping from space like Gort (that would be so much cooler of an analogy had they not redone TDTESS) and changing the world. With all of these new phones comes a plethora of new functionality that most users have rarely seen.

I’ve had a Windows Mobile phone for the past 7+ years going all the way back to Windows Mobile 5.0. I’ve since upgraded several times and am currently running Windows Mobile 6.5, albeit on a dismal wireless network where I live (not even 3G….). Through those years I learned a good bit about Windows Mobile, the ins and outs of its programming, tweaks, and more importantly, how do to recover when I totally jack it up. [More]

Coding for IE 8 is a daunting task. The new browser has increased its security and lowered its tolerance of lax, non standard coding. This is actually a good thing. But if your sites are not written quite right, things definitely don’t look too good to anyone who happens to be upgraded to the newest version. Microsoft knows that updating sites is a time consuming process and that some companies may never do it completely. To get around this issue, Microsoft supplies a number of options for making sure your site will display properly for all users.

The answer lies in the IE=EmulateIE7 custom header. This little piece of code is injected in the header of your site and tells IE8 to act like it’s older sibling, IE7. IE8 will apply IE7 standards, as well as render the document type to IE7. This process is automatic and the user will just view the site normally. [More]

A web farm is essential to a high traffic site. Redundancy, intelligent traffic flow, collaboration and monitoring are keys to maintaining uptime and availability. The correct infrastructure will mean a solid, consistent presence for a site with an industry standard 99.9999+% uptime .

At the core of any web farm is redundancy. Any single point of failure is a vulnerability. Here is sample topography of a basic implementation. [More]

I've built several sites that utilize LINQ to read XML files. And repeatedly I come across an issue where I seemingly have everything in the right place and coded, yet it does not compile. [More]

When developing applications in Silverlight 2.0, there are many new objects and controls. One of the most popular and useful ones is the media element. The media element control is used to display audio/video content within the Silverlight application. In order to display/play a media element, the “source” must first be set.

medelem1.Source = new Uri(“/audioFiles/audiofile1.mp3”, UriKind.Relative); [More]

According to Microsoft documentation, you are supposed to be able to just drop in custom item template zip files into your template directory and VS will automatically see them and make them available.

I was working with a third party component that I wanted to integrate into to Visual Studio. The company provided a pre-packaged Item Template zip file. I followed their instructions and dropped it in My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ItemTemplates\Visual C# folder. I then opened my web application and tried to create a new item based on that template. [More]