Blog of Shaun McCran - Architecting robust, elegant technical and business solutions - Server management

Using url rewriting ( .htaccess or httpd.ini ) to block hot linking resources

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:37:00 -0000

After my recent move to HostMediaUK I've been able to see more in depth statistics about one of my sites, including traffic and data usage. This also includes having visibility of other domains that are linking directly to my content. This is popularly known as hot linking, and if you haven't asked permission is considered very impolite.

This also uses up your servers bandwidth rather than theirs. This article explores how I use a URL access file, either .htaccess of http.ini depending on your platform, to stop other domains from linking directly to your hosted resources.

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HostMediaUK site migration complete

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 14:22:00 -0000

I'd been unhappy with my current hosting provider for a while, the performance just wasn't there, and the more I pushed the boundaries of development the more blocks I encountered. Also they were running old versions of ColdFusion and an old JVM which was having an effect on some Java development.

About three months ago I bought a test account with HostmediaUK. I thought I'd venture into Linux based ColdFusion 9 hosting and see how it worked out. I dropped a few test sites onto the platform and discovered a few migration issues around Linux, obvious things to me now, but case sensitive database table names and a totally different file directory system caused me major headaches.

That being said the server performance is great. sites respond well to requests, is easy to manage through the software layer installed on the servers, and when I requested access to the DNS settings it was freely given (albeit with the usual 'here be dragons' warning!).

The customer service is great too, they keep winning awards and I can see why. I've just finished migrating the rest of my site to their platform, it is rare that I recommend a service but I'd point anyone in the direction of HostmediaUK.

The SEO way to safely redirect a Page or folder using 301 redirects

Mon, 10 May 2010 17:09:00 -0000

In a recent project we are restructuring a site to be more intuitively architected. But what impact will moving the directories or pages have on all that hard earned Search Engine Ranking Optimisation work? This article deals with how to safely redirect users from an old page or folder to the new URL, and keep Search Engine's informed of your changes without leading them to dead content (Dead content is bad and will adversely affect your Site rankings). [More]

Changing the 404 template handler in IIS

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:36:00 -0000

You could use a 404 ColdFusion template to handle missing templates, or the onmissingtemplate Application CFC function. Luckily I have a client with half a dozen sites all on the same server, with nothing else on it, so it makes more sense to do this in Internet Information Services. 404 templates are a handy way of masking any site errors or missing templates. Not only are they a cosmetic fix to nasty display errors but they can also seriously help your server security. [More]

Windows 2003 Server does not stream F4V videos - adding mime types

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:21:00 -0000

With the introduction of Adobe's new .F4v flash wrapper you may find that your server does not respond well to files of the .f4v extension. Mine has been returning a 404 error, despite the file being in the right location. This appears to be a Mime type error, rather than any coding error. Your server simply does not know what type of file the .f4v is, so we need to tell it.

On the Windows 2003 server, open the Internet Information Services Manager.
Expand the Local Computer Server.
Right-click the local computer server and select Properties.
Select the MIME Types tab.
Click New and enter the following information: Associated Extension box: .F4V MIME Type box: video/mp4
Click OK

You must then restart the World Wide Web Publishing service, as changes do not take effect until the service is refreshed. At this point you should have working .f4v flash movies.