WordPress · ASP.NET · C# · SQL · jQuery · Responsive Mobile Design

Why I Have Earned the Title “Father of Bloggers”

12 Apr 13 by 1 Comment

My daughter Anna’s post about her experience at WordCamp Miami 2013.

Oh yeah. She won an iPad Mini.

Filed Under: Blog

Upgrading to WordPress 3.4

21 Jun 12 by

I upgraded this site along with lots of others tonight as I watch the NBA Finals. GO HEAT!

A word of warning, if you are using the DB Cache Reloaded Fix plugin. Upgrade the plugin first before upgrading to WP 3.4.

Of course, you may also want to follow the official directions regarding upgrading WP by disabling ALL plugins first. I usually don’t do that but I do recommend backup up your site files and db before upgrading. Best choice for doing that is BackupBuddy!

Filed Under: Blog, WordPress

How to Do a 301 Redirect on IIS Using ISAPI Rewrite

14 May 12 by

I recently launched a new WordPress site running on IIS (yes, you read correctly). The web host had ISAP Rewrite installed so we planned to use that to support Apache mod_rewrite rules.

I had used the ISAPI Rewrite filter before to handle URL rewriting like the rewrite rules that come with WordPress to support permalinks. But I had never done a 301 Redirect on IIS with this method. How hard could it be? I was replacing an ASP.NET site and needed to redirect old links like this:

OLD:  http://www.example.com/AboutUs.aspx
NEW:  http://www.example.com/about-us/

In Apache you would simply do a 301 redirect by adding the following line to .htaccess:

# This will not work using ISAPI Rewrite
Redirect 301 /AboutUs.aspx http://www.example.com/about-us/

I assumed the same syntax would work in .htaccess using ISAPI Rewrite. WRONG!

It turns out that the Redirect directive is part of Apache mod_alias and not part of mod_rewrite. So, how do you do a 301 redirect using mod_rewrite? You can do all sorts of crazy URL rewriting using mod_rewrite but I just wanted to do a simple page to page redirect!

Well, here’s how I eventually got the redirect for the About Us page and the default.aspx page to work:

RewriteRule ^default\.aspx / [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^AboutUs\.aspx /about-us/ [R=301,L]

I hope this helps if you are trying to do a 301 redirect using ISAPI Rewrite.

Filed Under: Web Development

Firefox “sec_error_unknown_issuer” SSL Error

8 May 12 by

I noticed one of our sites was issuing an SSL Certificate error in Firefox with the error message “sec_error_unknown_issuer”. IE, Chrome and Safari were all good. (Who uses FF anymore? I stopped using Firefox when Chrome came out with developer tools.)

Anyway, it turns out that when you are issued your SSL cert you are also issued an intermediate certificate. My webhost had that box listed as optional and I didn’t have the intermediate cert filled in.

Once I entered the intermediate certificate the errors in Firefox went away. Took a few minutes to refresh.

I hope this helps anyone in the same situation.

Filed Under: Blog, Web Development

Sherlock Tech Redesigns With Responsive Mobile-Friendly WordPress Website

7 May 12 by

For the past few months I’ve been part of a team redesigning Sherlock Tech’s new website. SherlockTech Staffing is a boutique IT staffing and consulting agency for technical talent in Florida and other parts of the country.

I got involved with the project after running into a David Silverlight at the local WordPress meetup. I had worked with David many years ago and knew he was an excellent .Net and Silverlight developer so I was surprised to see him at a WordPress meetup. It turns out that David is working with WordPress now and was scouting out some plugin ideas for some of his sites. David introduced me to Alex Funkhouser Sherlock Tech’s President and I teamed up with Media In Sync and Steve Earle to work on the site.

In addition to re-platforming from a custom .NET/SQL CMS to WordPress, Sherlock had the following requirements:

  • Support mobile devices
  • Present a cleaner, more professional branding
  • Integrate with social media, especially Sherlock Tech’s Facebook Page
  • Integrate their website with a third-party recruiting application

Marsha Belinson, an Account Director with Sherlock served as the creative director/project manager for the redesign. Mobile support was a priority for Marsha and I recommended using a responsive design. I have been using the Genesis Theme framework from StudioPress for years and they had recently launched several new themes that were responsive. We selected the Genesis Streamline child theme and customized it to give Sherlock Tech their own unique branding.

Sherlock Tech uses a recruiting app called Sendouts to publish their open positions and track applicants. Sherlock wanted to use the Sendouts API to import open positions and add them as content on their new WordPress site. I created a custom post type to handle jobs and wrote a custom WordPress plugin to run each hour using the WP cron. The service pulls open jobs from Sendouts and synchronizes them with the existing custom posts on the WordPress site. Jobs are searchable on the Sherlock site and applicants then apply through the Sendouts app.

This was definitely one of the more challenging projects I have worked on in recent months. In my experience the key to a successful project is having good project leadership. Alex and Marsha provided clear direction on what they wanted and we launched on time and within budget.

Filed Under: Papasoft, WordPress
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