Chanh's blog

I revisit WebMatrix site recently just to see what’s up with this nice little web editor from Microsoft and I must say I am in for a pleasantly surprise!

WebMatrix turn into a small full Web development that installs quickly and it support database and PHP. It comes with a build in IISExpress and it works extremely well for web site development.

If you use the web installer to install the open source script like WordPress, Drupal, etc then WebMatrix will configure to support PHP automatically but if you create a site from scratch you have to do some manual tweaking!

You have to edit and a few lines in the config file as shown below and will you be able to edit your PHP file in your site.

C:\Users\[youruserlogin]\Documents\IISExpress8\config\applicationhost.config

< location path="wordpress" >
< system.webServer >
< handlers >
< add name="PHP via FastCGI" path="*.php" verb="*" modules="FastCgiModule" scriptProcessor="C:\Program Files\PHP\php-cgi.exe" resourceType="Either" / >
< /handlers >
< /system.webServer >
< /location >


Note: The above is assuming you install PHP from the web installer

Relevant links:

http://www.asp.net/WebMatrix

http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/features/

I have follow NetBeans IDE for a long time and with this latest version of NetBeans 6.8 it is surprisingly good!

NetBeans IDE 6.8 support Java EE, EJB, RESTful web services, JavaFX (Javascript), and PHP and more.

NetBeans also has integration with Kenai project. It has features for database integration, Ruby, Groovy, and C/C++ projects.

The one feature that I want to highlight here is PHP support! NetBeans has the most amazing support for PHP! You can install the plugins to do PHP look up right in the IDE, project, code navigation, code refactor, code usage, code run and debug, PHPUnit test, etc.

Oh my! It just has so much features that it will take pages and pages to even attempt to cover the little bit of what NetBeans can offer.

Best of all, it is FREE! I think I will be spending the majority of my PHP coding in NetBeans from here on unless other IDE can beat its features and price!

You can read the full features list here.

I have been using Visual Studio for a long time and also using the Express edition but until recent version 2008 of Visual Studio Express Web Developer Edition I say this is a clear winner but one little wish item, more about that later…

The Visual Studio Express Web Developer Edition is a freeware web development tool from Microsoft. Its main function is to create ASP.NET pages, It has a WYSIWYG interface and very good HTML editor, support CSS, Javascript, XML, drag-and-drop user interface designer; a database explorer for SQL express edition; and lot more!

I would not go into the limitation in compare to the paid version of Visual Studio but I do want to expand on the database explorer for SQL express edition. Some might think it is limited but I think it is perfect for personal development. It allow you to explore SQL database file without needing to concern about the standard SQL security and all that headache! You can debug your web site which access your SQL database file easily. In some case I would prefer this Express edition over the paid version although I do have both version load on my computer.

I heard the rumor that the future version of Visual Studio Express 2010 will have build in support for PHP if that is to be true it would be wonderful for open source developer. There is a big void out there for a nice editor that support PHP for free! There are some out there and I won’t name it but it just take too long to start up. If Visual Studio Express will have build in support for PHP that will be a big thumb up from me.

One little wish item that I would like to see in Visual Studio Express is to have some kind of plugin or extension support so that the open source community can help to extend this wonderful product further!

I have been searching for hosting service and there are so many out there, free and paid!

For most typical free hosting offering are provided with some catch like ads, point base, etc and with very limited web space, database size, bandwidth, etc.

Then I found this 000webhost, they gave you 1.5 Gig of web space, 2 MySQL databases, lot of bandwidth, rewrite rule support, PHP 5, GD, IMAP, webmail, etc.

You can read more about this service here.

Mod_rewrite was the only mean to have search engine friendly URL for a long time but it is no longer the case with this Microsoft URL rewrite module! It is extremely easy to use not like Mod_rewrite!

I will write more on how to use this URL rewrite module at my Docs site later but for now I will just post some high light!

Once this module is installed there are three templates available and they are:

# User Friendly URL
# Rule with Rewrite Map
# Request Blocking

There are so much more you can do with it!

You can download it here.

You can get more information here.

I have been looking for a search solution for our intranet site and have evaluate several search packages!

I recently come across Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express which is a free application that you can download from here.

It can crawl content from various sources such as Windows SharePoint Services sites, file shares, Exchange Public Folders, and Web sites. Although Search Server Express includes only a subset of the search features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 but from what I can see it is just perfect for my need.

Here are a features list of this product.

On top of that, don’t forgot this is a SharePoint Service bundle with search so you can do all things that you can with SharePoint including Wiki, blog, calendar, and lot more…

With such a features list who need anything else!

IE 8 has just released and it is FAST!

I did a side by side comparison with FF 3. I double click on FF then double click on IE 8, IE 8 already finish render the page fully while FF still no where to be seen. A few second later FF show up but still trying to load the home page.

I also use IE 8 to search for site and run into a site that do some strange thing and might even be malicious, IE 8 just close that session like nothing has happen. If it would be FF either FF will freeze or lock up my computer, that is usually happen with FF.

IE 8 also come with tone of add-ons and if I can get most of the FF add-ons in IE 8 I will be going solo with IE 8.

You can check out IE 8 here

And the add-ons are here

Yii framework, if you like PRODO you will like Yii more! Yii is a high performance (see comparison chart) component PHP 5 framework. Yii’s features include MVC, DAO/ActiveRecord, I18N/L10N, caching, jQuery-based AJAX support, authentication and role-based access control, scaffolding, input validation, widgets, events, theming, Web services, and etc.

Yii framework resources

I have been playing with Windows SharePoint Services for a long time but with the latest WSS short for (Windows SharePoint Services SP1) and especially with service pack 1, it is very mature and ready for production use.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is included in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows Server 2008, and is also available separately as a download.

With  WSS you can build site as Wiki, Blog, social networking, document sharing, extensible with web parts, ASP.NET, integrate with SQL reporting services, etc.  You can develop for WSS with Visual Studio tools or SharePoint designer.  It comes with support for workflow which you can create human process for thing like form approval, decision making, etc.

I will write more about WSS here and at my main site http://ongetc.com on how-to and pratical use of WSS.  Stay tune!

For the first time, there is content managment system utilizing MVC pattern for ASP.NET.

Oxite is an open source web application using ASP.NET MVC. The current version is an alpha release.

Oxite provides with these features:

• pingbacks
• trackbacks
• anonymous or authenticated commenting (with optional moderation)
• gravatar support
• RSS feeds at any page level
• support for MetaWebLog API
• web admin panel
• site search
• ability to create and edit any pages and a child page of another page on your site.
• The web-based edit and create page or use put in your own HTML
• the built-in authentication system.
• support for multiple blogs on one site, or data for more than one site in the same database.

Site power by Oxite: http://www.visitmix.com

Download Oxite here: http://www.codeplex.com/oxite