This blog is an ongoing project by Mike Maddaloni, president of Dunkirk Systems, LLC, to archive the myriad of tech tips and resources he has collected along his 10+ years as a Web developer.
Wondering why you can’t do wildcard host header binding in IIS7? I was too, and I dound this great article on wildcard host header binding and subdomains in IIS7 at Dirk.net In short, you need a dedicated IP address for the site if you want to do it. With the shortage of IP addresses, it’s probably not likely for a small Web site. The post also references this forum thread on IIS.net on the topic, with a pretty lame response from someone at Microsoft. Here’s to it being added in the future!
This is a list of Flash video stream recorders for capturing video from a Web page. I have not tried all of these myself, but share them in case you have a need for this.
Stack Overflow is a free Q&A community for programming questions. I subscribe to their feed and watch for items of interest and ones I may be able to contribute to the answers. If you are a programmer, it’s worth taking a look, and search.
Accessible Captcha is an extension for ExpressionEngine 1.x where instead of showing a graphic and the user has to figure what hidden message is displayed, it displays a question randomly from a admin-defined list. Much more friendly than those hard-to-read images, not to mention the benefit for those who are visually impaired! I use it on all of my EE sites. It is free, but they accept a donation.
resizeMyBrowser allows you to easily resize your browser to predefined sizes. The links listed show pixel sizes and what computer or device it represents.
Easy Musicplayer For Flash, or EMFF, allows you to embed an MP3 file into a Web page to allow Web visitors to play the file without downloading it locally then playing it.
Twitter Counter offers free stats and widgets to track and promote your Twitter account. They also have paid services which build on these services. The button below is the count of followers for my account, @thehotiron.
CFLib.org is a ColdFusion common functions library project created by Raymond Camden. Its stated purpose is to create a set of user-defined function (UDF) libraries for ColdFusion 5.0 and higher.
BrowserHawk is a server-side (and now hosted) application for detecting everything about the visitor to your Web site – the platform, browser, resolution, etc. I have used this tool in the past and it is well worth the cost to learn everything about your users. You can use this detection information to determine what is presented to the Web visitor. It works with most all Web scripting languages.
This thread in the ExpressionEngine forums talks about file upload limits. In short, it can be the setting within EE or in PHP on your server, which may be able to be changed in php.ini. If all else fails, contact your Web host.
We have been experimenting with Tweetmeme and how to add a retweet button to your blog. We are testing it both on the Web pages as well as the Web pages here at sourcegate as well as in the RSS feed. Please take a look and tell us how we are doing!
