Spam Free

Slickhouse has been live for almost a week now and I'm yet to receive a spam comment. In comparison, each time I logged into the WordPress Admin on v8 of the site, I was greeted with over 200 spam comments to moderate, that Askimet had trapped.

So it seems that OpenCAPTCHA is working as intended and preventing spammers from submitting comments.

When selecting a Captcha provider for SlickCMS, I had several criteria including:

OpenCAPTCHA was the only one I came across that met all my requirements. Although no formal sample code is provided in ASP (SlickCMS' language of choice), the PHP code was easy enough to grasp and develop the same.

So, if you're looking for a spam prevention tool for your next web project, consider OpenCAPTCHA.

comments Posted: Tuesday 2nd March 2010, 18:31pm
Categories: Slickhouse
Tags: slickcms

V9 and SlickCMS is live

Version 9 of Slickhouse.com is now live and I've switched from WordPress to my very own Content Management System, SlickCMS.

The theme has gone a bit darker this time around, but should hopefully tie everything together well. I've decided to drop the 2 sidebars and have increased the main content width, to allow for bigger images within future Posts.

It's been tested working in all the major browsers and has taken about a week's worth of evenings, after I'd released version 2.6.147 of SlickCMS to the public.

Overall, you should find the site closely resembles the previous version in terms of functionality and content. From a technical point of view, SlickCMS utilises Microsoft's ASP, ASP.NET and SQL Server platforms, rather than WordPress' PHP/MySQL.

Let me know if you come across any issues with the new site. I'll be closely monitoring the logs over the coming days, to ensure everything's running as planned.

Lastly, expect a lot more on this site in future - as after completely every line of code, I can concentrate on some content.

comments Posted: Wednesday 24th February 2010, 18:31am
Categories: SlickCMS, Slickhouse
Tags: slickcms

The Setup

Inspired by the site over at usethis.com, the following is a brief interview between me and, well, me.

Matthew Juffs
Web Developer, Techie

Who are you and what do you do?

I'm Matt, Husband to Anneka and Daddy to Lily (18 months) and Mia (15 weeks to go). By day I'm a Web Developer for IOCEA.com Ltd, the creators of Cshop and by night I develop my own sites and tinker with my servers.

I code primarily in ASP (Classic and .NET) with Microsoft SQL Server, but have been known to dabble in PHP and MySQL. Then I used a splashing of XHTML/CSS to bring it altogether and a sprinkling of Javascript if required.

My personal project, SlickCMS is nearing completion for a public release, over a year after embarking on it. I'm still contemplating going Open Source with it, or simply making it freely available.

When I'm not developing for work or my own kicks, I try to improve my measly XBOX 360 Gamer Score; Fallout 3 is proving to be engaging.

What hardware do you use?

At work, a Dell Optiplex 320 with 2GB RAM and an Intel Pentium D. It has lasted me nearly 3 years of development without any problems. It has 2 Sony 17" LCDs connected to it, with a Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 - an older gaming mouse I found to be perfect for me, a lefty.

At home, a Sony VAIO, again with 2GB RAM and an Intel Pentium (M). It runs Windows 7 fine and my only complaint is the loud fan.

I also run several servers in the loft, including a mini-itx Firewall and an AMD Athlon X2 with 6GB RAM as a Virtual Host.

And what software?

My work desktop and laptop run pretty much the same set of software, with the former using Vista and the latter Windows 7. Visual Studio 2008; Microsoft SQL Server 2008; Office 2007; Notepad++ and 7Zip amongst others.

Browser wise, it's Internet Explorer 8 at work, with Google Chrome at home. I prefer the minimalist approach of Chrome for browsing websites and the Web Developer toolbar of IE8 for development purposes.

The Firewall uses Smoothwall and the Virtual Host uses Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, with the VMs a mix of Server 2003/2008.

Lastly, I am a fan of Star Wars, so my Servers are named after planets: Bespin for the Host; Talus, Hoth and Corellia (amongst others) for the VMs and Tatooine for the NAS.

What would be your dream setup?

At work, a 30" Dell monitor, with the Sonys either side would work well - all powered by a Intel Xenon workstation.

Laptop wise, a bleeding-edge Lenovo, Sony or Dell would be good. Maybe a high-end netbook or lightweight laptop for browsing the Internet when not developing too.

My servers could do with an upgrade and consolidation - there's no need to run all 4 of them 24/7, when just the one with a bunch of Virtuals would suffice.

I used to roll with a desktop at home, for PC Gaming and occasional developing - but have since found a laptop to be ideal for sitting on the sofa whilst coding.

comments Posted: Tuesday 26th January 2010, 18:31pm
Categories: Articles, Computers and Technology, SlickCMS, Slickhouse, Web, Work
Tags: asp, microsoft

5th November of Slickhouse

Take a look to the right and you'll see 5 lots of Novembers in the Archive:

Which makes this blog 4 years old! A lot has happened in the past 4 years, including 2 jobs (with a slight career change); visiting Africa twice; becoming a Dad; getting married; becoming a Dad again.

Hopefully I'll be looking back in another 4 years stating that slickhouse.com is 8 years old. Over the coming months into 2010, I plan to make a few strategic changes to the site and increase its popularity. I've learnt a wealth of knowledge working as a Web Developer since May 2007, so I'd like to publish a few articles along those lines too. And my side-project SlickCMS has been rolled out to several sites, so I figure it's now time I bite the bullet and switch from WordPress. There's a bit more functionality still to add, such as RSS feeds and Archives - but once they're done Slickhouse will be powered by SlickCMS.

Don't get me wrong: WordPress is a fantastic piece of Web Publishing Software, it's just that after 4 years I feel it's time to put what I've learnt from using it to good use and develop my own. Besides, I'm an ASP.NET/SQL Developer and my PHP knowledge is dwindling in comparison.

comments Posted: Saturday 14th November 2009, 18:31pm
Categories: SlickCMS, Slickhouse, Web
Tags: slickcms, slickhouse

Speed improvements

Inspired by a few articles I came across recently, namely:

I decided to embark on improving page load times on slickhouse.com - mainly by migrating the content to a separate domain, which would be cookie-less. This provides performance improvements in 2 main ways:
  1. Increasing the number of simultaneous requests
  2. Reducing the size of the requests/responses to and from the server(s)
Slickhouse.co.uk has been registered for a while, but simply used as a pointer to slickhouse.com, so it made sense to use it as the site for serving static content.

1) is achieved by serving the images, css and javascript files from a separate source to the HTML pages. So as you're busy downloading the homepage from slickhouse.com the images are being downloaded from slickhouse.co.uk - bypassing the 2 HTTP requests limit set by the HTML specification.

2) is achieved in the same way, by switching off cookies on slickhouse.co.uk - which in turn, can help reduce the request/response sizes and thus the page load times.

My initial testing has shown a noticeable improvement, though I don't have any metrics to share. I used Microsoft's Fiddler tool to profile the load times and was surprised how much external content the site uses, from 3rd parties. The twitter feed on the right is 2 requests alone and the Google Map that was tucked away in the site's footer added a further 20 or so. This gave a sluggish feel to the site as each page loaded.

So I updated the theme files and removed some of the excess requests, to bring it down to ~14 for the homepage. It's still high and could be improved further using CSS sprites. But I'll save that for the next version.

To summarise, splitting your static content from the dynamic pages helps increase page load times. It also allows for future expandability, as the static content could be hosted on a separate server, or even on a cloud/CDN solution.

comments Posted: Friday 13th November 2009, 18:31pm
Categories: Links, Slickhouse, Web
Tags: cookies, iis, slickhouse