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 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.

Bing is the replacement search engine from Microsoft to replace “Live”

Bing a new search engine has a better-organized search experience give consumers cash back when made a purchase (look for “Bing Cashback” link) and Ping shows consumers with relevant ads while they are searching to purchase.

Bing offer API for developer and publisher, more to come later…

Check out the new search engine:  http://bing.com

Internet plays a big role in US 2008 election.

By now many of you that follow US 2008 election know that Mr. Obama was elected as the first African-American US president.  This is a historic moment that we are witnessing.

What is more interesting is Mr. Obama use internet and social networking to help him spread his message and fund raising.  For example, Mr. Hughes was one of the 4 co-founder of Facebook left the company to work in Chicago on Senator Obama’s new-media campaign and manage http://my.barackobama.com, Mr. Obama’s presence on Facebook, etc.

There are so much election coverage on the internet via various web site that you can follow much of what is going without needing to watch the TV like in the old day.

You can even see the live projection of the election live on various web sites.

It is just amazing!

Back in the ’80 if I want to learn something usually will be from the book, magazine, newspaper or library but with the advance of internet, dial up then high speed internet and with the help of great search engine like AltaVista, Yahoo, Google, MSN Live and a few others probably forgotten search engine by now.

I remember I used to belong to the mailing book club and I have shelf to shelf, wall to wall and garage full of books and magazines.  I had to develop a filing system that I can go to the shelf to pull out the books or magazines that I was looking for the information that I need but now I just pull up my internet connection and visit one of the search engines and just search away!  I usually get my answer with less time than I would in compare to the day when I look through my shelf for the answer.

One side effect of this quick to gain knowledge through the internet is I learn to read quickly, learn more and expand my horizon to reach outside of physical boundary.  I start to have colleague from outside my city, state, country and pretty soon around the world.

Oh, one other thing I tend to like to read something that to the point and brief comment about a particular topic because I got spoil with quick access to information and I guess that is why blog becoming so common and popular…

A little off topic on blog, I remember someone approach me to install WordPress on our demo site to show case this newly name blog package call WordPress and wow it has just been a few years and now WordPress is just everywhere, it is a phenomenal!

I better stop now before I bore you!