Jeff Julian's Blog

GWB | Better Community Twitter Tools

Jeff Julian — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:46:56 GMT

Well that title may be a little misleading, but I fixed several issues with the community twitter tools we have on Geekswithblogs including integrating the Follower counts for each member into a new twitter cloud.

The link to the community twitter portal is: http://wblo.gs/?q=twitter

I also fixed a few linking errors:

Underscores are supported for those who link to … ummmm… D’Arcy is the only one I know who uses underscores so him. @darcy_lussier
#Hashtags will not turn into links for search
Thanks to the twitter admins, we now have unlimited rights to request using the API so we have updated the processing to every 2 minutes.
I fixed some issues we had with our scheduled twitter tool for loading status updates

If you see some more issues with the twitter integration or really want the ability to turn it off on the side of your blog, please post on this entry. Thanks

Technorati Tags: Geekswithblogs,Twitter,Integration,API

Geekswithblogs Search Provider | Thanks Lance!

Jeff Julian — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:32:50 GMT

I first need to start this post with a thank you to Lance Robinson for submit all the required work and the idea of a Geekswithblogs.net search provider. Now when you visit the Geekswithblogs.net Homepage, if you drop down your search providers list you will see a “Geekswithblogs” listing as well as a highlighted link to add the Geekswithblogs search provider to your browser. With this, you then can use the Geekswithblogs search for finding answers to the questions you have.

Our search is powered by Bing, but it is pretty much the same result set Live Search would give for our entire site. We still need to review what the changes in the Bing API would do for our integration with the search engine and how we would display that information.

Please remember at any point you have an idea on how we can change Geekswithblogs.net, please email us and let us know what is on your mind.

Technorati Tags: Geekswithblogs,Bing,Search Provider,Lance Robinson

GWB | Sorry about the outage this morning

Jeff Julian — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 11:56:35 GMT

It looks like someone (probably search engine bots) were a little more excited with these servers than they were with the last and made over 10,000 requests in a minute, causing IIS to shut down. I up-ed the limit and am going to keep an eye on concurrent connections for awhile. If you see any issues with GWB, please @jjulian message me on Twitter or email me at jjulian AT geekswithblogs.com. Thanks!!!!

Geekswithblogs | Breaking In The New Processors

Jeff Julian — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:26:20 GMT

We are now live on the new servers!

Some of the other sites are down for migration like the support site, but I hope to have them up soon. If you see any problems, please let me know ASAP by email jjulian AT geekswithblogs.com or DM me on Twitter @jjulian.

Back From Maine – GWB IIS Migration

Jeff Julian — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:35:36 GMT

Maine was great! This passed weekend and beginning of the week, my wife and I took our first vacation without the kiddos since our honeymoon in celebration of our 5 year anniversary. At first we were looking for places like New York or Chicago to go, but I wanted to get away from hectic life and visiting large cities is just a hectic as real life in KC. So we decided to go to Maine on a whim. Since it was so unlike us (mainly me) to not do trips like this, we went one step further and only planned the airfare and rental car. The rest of the trip was in God’s hand and it was amazing. Most of the time we went Lighthouse to Lighthouse, took photos (my new hobby), and just relaxed and checked out the area. We were able to get a convertible from the rental car place which made the drives even better.

I totally would suggest anyone get away in this style. Now I am sitting back in the hot office (for some reason GWB HQ AC is not working right), but I feel relaxed and ready to kick 2009/2010 in the rear.

Here are some photos from our trip:

So What’s Next:

Now that I am back, I have started transferring the database and web servers to their new homes. This includes a lot of third-party applications for ticket tracking, statistics, email, advertising, ftp, documents, and newsletters. I am doing each application one at a time leaving the main site for the last since it is the biggest. I will post in the new few days to let you know everything has moved.

Technorati Tags: Vacation,Geekswithblogs,Maine

GWB: First Post on GWB and SQL Server 2008

Jeff Julian — Mon, 25 May 2009 12:36:55 GMT

We did the database migration this morning and everything seems to work perfectly. The environment is about 5x what our previous server configuration was and we moved from SQL Server 2000 to 2008. Ping me if you see any issues because that was a little too easy.

GWB | Is that the smell of new servers?

Jeff Julian — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:01:15 GMT

Over the next month we will be migrating the Geekswithblogs system over to new hardware with a platform upgrade to Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. This upgrade will force us to make some changes that are needed to the database and others that are just because (like ASP.NET 2.0 to ASP.NET 3.5).

What does this mean if you are a blogger? Hopefully nothing. The idea is to migrate the data/code to the new servers with dummy IPs and then when we are ready, swap the IPs with the new boxes and BAM, new servers and software. We will probably be down for an hour or so but will try to make it during a non-critical time.

We are doing some minor fixes during this rev to the GWB system, but nothing dramatic in case we have issues. It will be much easier to track down one source of the issue (migration) than it would be to look into two (migration/code update).

Currently we are hoping to do a summer launch of some new functionality focused mainly on commenting, spam, and end-reader features. If you are dying to see some features that other systems have, please leave a comment and tell me all about them. I am always open for input.

- Jeff Julian

Technorati Tags: Geekswithblogs,Hosting,Servers

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 – RIP MOSS Acronym

Jeff Julian — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:57:19 GMT

In a bold move, Microsoft decided to rename SharePoint one more time to SharePoint 2010 for the next version. Check out these two articles on the change, but it looks like the detachment from Office does not mean it will be less feature rich with the integration with Office, much like portals weren’t removed when it went from SPS to MOSS. I am excited to see the name change, but we really need a new acronym as trendy as MOSS was. MSP, SPX, not sure.

No name has been released for WSS, but my bet is on WSS 4.0.

Becky, might want to check on SPLover.com or SharePointLover.com quickly.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,MOSS,2010

GMail.com and IE 8 – Does anyone else have this problem

Jeff Julian — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:26:28 GMT

Over the last few days I have been plagued with a view of GMail that does not make for a “Google" experience of UX. All my buttons are vertical instead of horizontal! Features still work, but it is quite annoying. I am wondering if any one else is going through it or if it is just me.

<—Click the image to see what it looks like. My resolution is 1920x1200 on both displays.

Technorati Tags: Gmail,IE8,Bugs

GWB | The World Is Changing

Jeff Julian — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:11:58 GMT

Some thought it would be impossible to catch up with Chris Williams, but D’Arcy has done it. They are currently tied, but because D’Arcy posted last, his name is on top. This is the first time we have seen another name at the top of the list in years.

D’Arcy: Congrats! Chris: I know the battle is not over yet.