Publishing made easy

Here's two content management systems (CMS) that are either free or low cost:

CityDesk: Desktop Content Management

eZ publish Open Source Content Management System (CMS)

And an article that tells you all about eZ publish: eZ publish 3.1: Take It For A Spin

Perl for the masses

Here's an excellent online course that also covers security issues when using CGI: Ovid's Web Programming Using Perl

Big Brother is just around the corner

And I'm not talking about the TV show. George Orwell may have been off by 20 years, but I think what he predicted is soon to be reality.

FBI targets Net phoning: "if broadband providers cannot isolate specific VOIP calls to and from individual users, they must give police access to the 'full pipe'--"

For those that ever wondered about this question: What Is a DLL?

Web Matrix update

The popular (and free) ASP.Net development tool has been enhanced with J#.Net and now has support for connecting to MS Access databases. Along with several bug fixes, the newest version is available here: ASP.NET Web Matrix Project

Have a Tech question?

Found an excellent tech message board with answers to lots of those strange little problems that crop up: TechSpot OpenBoards

Another web exploit

There's a little "bug" that effects every version of Windows since Win98 and allows a malicious web page to execute code. Of course, we all know what havoc this can play on your computer. The most nefarious method is to send the malicious page via e-mail after which some e-mail clients will preview the page and let the code execute.

Here's the link to Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 814078 with instructions on how to patch your system: Flaw in Windows Script Engine May Allow Code to Run

Here's an interesting tutorial from SitePoint which even includes source code: Create Your Own Guestbook In ASP.NET

ASP.NET 101: PostBacks

So, let's go down the .NET path and explore some of the new things that are available. First off, designing and posting to web-based forms has taken on a new dimension. You can write code to add function to your page and simply post back to the orginal .aspx page. At the same time, let's introduce the asp:panel tag. Rendered by the .NET server as a DIV, you can call each panel by it's ID attribute inside your code.

In this first example, let's make a simple form to collect a user's information. When the form is submitted, we will hide the original form and replace it with a new asp:panel containing new HTML created with the newly gathered data. So, make the first panel visible like so: asp:panel id="panelSurvey" runat="server" Visible="True" and further down the page, make the second panel hidden asp:panel id="panelAfterPost" runat="server" Visible="False".

In our VB code, we will simply swap the Visible attribute:

script runat="server"

	Sub Button_Click(sender as Object, e as EventArgs)

		If Page.IsPostBack then

		panelSurvey.Visible="False"

		panelAfterPost.Visible="True"

		End If

	End Sub

/script

Try out the page here or view the source code.

Everything you'd ever want to know about registering domain names: Domain Guru

WHOIS your daddy?

Ok, I think that I've overused that line. But hey, this is an interesting article on building your own lookup tool using C# - Build a WHOIS Lookup in ASP.NET

Site Updates
Nobody really complained, but the Archive section was not formatted very well and, as a result, was not being indexed for searches. I've corrected this little oversight and thus you can use the search tool to glean through the old posts.

.Net Starter Kits

An interesting set of tools designed for .Net. The Community Starter Kit will have a website up and running for you in no time. It includes polls, a discussion forum, a picture gallery and more. Check it out, along with the others at http://www.asp.net.

Custom Fit your Popup Script

Here's an interesting tutorial for scripting a popup window that dynamically resizes to the dimensions of a banner .GIF or .JPG image. It also introduced me to the built-in JavaScript function resizeBy(): Resize a Popup to Fit an Image's Size

SPAM!

Ok, just when you think you've got e-mail SPAM under control, the weasels figure out a new way to get at you. I got to experience it first hand about a week after I got the new web server running. It didn't take long for those pesty "messenger service" boxes to start popping up on the server's desktop.

Originally intended for administrative messages over the local network, Microsoft has the messenger service "on" by default when you install. This leaves a specific port open that SPAM lords can now scan for. If found open, they will send advertisements to your machine.

Although I don't endorse (or have even tried) the software this site offers, they do have some information and tutorials on how you can shutdown this new "loop hole" that SPAMMERS are exploiting: Stop Messenger Spam

Style Sheets for Accessibility

I've got a project where I need to add a "text-only" section to an existing web site. The best idea would be to use style sheets to control the font-sizes that each user can adjust to make the pages more readable. Here's an article on how to do just that: Build User-Controlled Style Sheets for Greater Accessibility

Got .NET?

I asked that question a couple of months back and now we can say "yes we do" here at randompsycho.org. So get ready for a whole bunch of posts about ASP.NET and C#. So lets dive into the Top 5 .NET Newbie Questions and Answers.

Fine tune your Server

So, you've set up your first web server with IIS. What next? Here's some tips: ASP 101 - Ten Ways to Make the Most of IIS

Actually, tweeking this spiffy little feedback form has been educational. After gettting the basics to work, I wanted to validate the form to check for empty fields (don't you just hate those e-mail with nothing in them?).

As one would expect, there's lots of tutorials on that subject, using either JavaScript or VBScript. Here's one using the VBS:
ASP Form validation

Since I mentioned the e-mail form that I added to this site, here's a tutorial on how to use the free JMail component with IIS:

How to send email using JMail from Active Server Pages (ASP)