How to use telnet to test ssl/https websites As I wrote recently, I had some issues with SSL on one of my sites. As part of the troubleshooting process I wanted a way to confirm that the site was responding properly on port 443 (the secure default SSL port) and that the SSL certificate was […]
Redirect from HTTPS to HTTP using an htaccess file
I ran into some issues recently where I needed to redirect HTTP to HTTPS for all requests on my site. It took a surprising amount of Google searching and tinkering to find a solution. Ultimately the solution was pretty simple, so I figured I’d share it here and hopefully same other people some time. So, backstory, […]
htaccess, Linux, nginx, redirect, web hostingIIS7 Application Pool Idle Time-out Settings
Whether you host in-house or with a managed Windows hosting provider, if you self-administer a web server it is good to know that by default IIS7 sets application pools to “time-out” after 20 minutes of inactivity. So if you don’t have any visitors to your site within 20 minutes, the application pool will shut down […]
Hosting, IIS, OrcsWeb, System Administration, tipCloud Server Flexibility
I’ve been in the industry for a long time, so I understand why the big cloud players want to lock users into predefined configurations of compute, memory, and storage. It helps balance and maximize resources, which optimizes their platform density, and of course brings them higher margins. But this isn’t best for customers. If I […]
cloud, Hosting, IIS, OrcsWeb, SherWebCloud Server Performance Metrics
It’s hard to really know what you get when buying cloud services today. Depending on the vendor they might sell their services with set amounts of “cores”, or “compute units”, or “vCPUs”. Storage might be spinning disks in speeds ranging from 7,200 RPM to 15,000 RPM or the storage might be newer solid state drives […]
Hosting, Linux, performance, WindowsStarting All Sites in IIS on a Windows Server
So I recently had to do some work on a server that required stopping all sites in IIS but without stopping IIS itself. Here’s the short post on how I did that. Now of course I needed to have all the sites turned back on again. Just restarting IIS wouldn’t do what I needed – […]
Stopping All Sites on a Windows Server Without Stopping IIS
I had a need recently to stop all the sites running on a Windows server, but I didn’t want to stop IIS. This specific server has hundreds of sites running on it, so stopping each one at a time would have taken an excessive amount of time. So with a little Google-fu I stumbled across […]
Hosting, IIS, System AdministrationWordPress IIS and PNG Not Showing Up Headaches
Okay, this bit me again today, and I didn’t remember the solution from previous research so I had to research it again. That to me means I need to write it up in a blog post. :) I’m running WordPress for this blog. It is hosted on a Windows 2012 R2 server (using IIS, not Apache) […]
EC2 Error: The request must contain the parameter instance id
I was trying to associate an elastic IP to a running EC2 VM today and kept hitting this error. There is surprisingly little available via Google when typing in the error message – nothing actually with an exact match. So I figured I’d drop a quick post to help out other people like myself who […]
Convert a Folder to an Application on a Remote IIS Host
The topic recently came up of the best way to convert a folder to an application on remote shared hosting server. Some hosts may have this built-in to their control panel. I know many (like Cytanium) have options in the control panel to create Virtual Directories, but sometimes an application specifically needs its folder to […]
cytanium, Hosting, IIS, System Administration