There are some issues and changes going on with this blog and I want to apologize if you have an unpleasant experience over the previous few and the next few days.  I understand if you rip me off of your feedreader, I have a low tolerance for change and availability myself.  Here are some of the things going on:

• My ISP (DiscountASP.net) is under serious attack with a multi-day DDOS attack.  I understand that the attack is not their fault, but it has gone on a little too long for my taste.
• I am re-shuffling some domains and hosting accounts that I own.  My goal is to get everything on one Virtual Server, rather than scattered in 3 accounts on 2 separate hosting companies.  I do not intend this to effect the up or downtime of this site, but you never know.
• As part of the above change, I moved off of  Feedburner.  My thought was that it would be easier to move if the feed was coming from the site rather than a service.  In hind site the opposite is true and if I thought about it long enough I would have realized that.  I am not sure if moving back would break more people that it fixes.  If you are not getting updates, re-burn the feed again.
• Over the next couple months I am going to launch one or two more sites that I am working on now (I should not promise too much - it might be into the fall before I have something fully baked).  Hence the reason for wanting to go with a virtual server.
• I am also refreshing my blogroll, navigation, some of the items on the sidebar to give the blog a fresher look and feel.
• I am upgrading some of the software that runs this site (specifically the version of dasBlog).
• larryclarkin.com will still be the main blogging site and I appreciate everyone who is following along.

Raster (Pete) points out that companies who should care about preserving links are often the ones that break them.  His example is the local "old school" News / Sports / Talk AM Radio Station that happens to be one of the biggest media outlets in the area (and the only local radio station that I listen to).  The radio station recently re-launched their web web site with a new look, new navigation and a bunch of new features (and it is much improved over their previous web site).  They have been mentioning that it was coming on the air for a couple weeks and have been talking about it on every show since it launched (the sports guy talked about the new web site for longer than he did about the Brewers win over the Giants).  They probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the project.  And they seem to have broken every link to the site.  A quick check of the search engines (both Google and Live) found that every link on the search results page takes you to an error page (Hint: did you know if you search for site:domainname.com the search engine will show you every page indexed on a site - it is a great way to see what the search engines have found about your site).

I don't want to pick on the radio station too much, because while they have broken a lot of links they at least did one thing correctly - they trapped the 404 message (at least as of Today they have - Pete mentioned he got a 404 error from it).  When you are doing a major site overhaul (like this one), there are two types of errors that you can create:

• Type 1 error - a link that was created in the past no longer points to the same content on your site and the user gets a very nasty error (up to the most dreaded error the HTTP 404 error)
• Type 2 error - a link that was created in the past no longer points to the same content on your site, but you either redirect them to the content or provide them a friendly page where they can find the content themselves

If you follow any of the dead links to the radio station web site, you get re-directed to a standard error page that is branded like the rest of the site and contains the major navigation (sports, weather, etc) and gives you a search dialogue box.  Not the article that you were looking for, but it is much nicer than the standard 404 error page that you get from the web server.

The Type 2 error is still bad: you can cause user frustration and you definitely lose out on the search engine boost that you can get from all the links pointing to your content (With our current dependence on page rank that cost can be extremely high).

Call to action

Test your web site for 404 trapping - I learned this neat little trick to test the lowest level 404 trapping.  Go to the root of the web server and type in a complete nonsense path, for example http://amazon.com/DHFHIHJJIASJRJT/JTYUKODIUEFHE.JGHTUIU to see how well Amazon.com traps 404s.  Make up the path, page name and page extension.  If the complete nonsense gets trapped/redirected, chances are that you are good.  Then you can start testing for paths that actually exist and for extensions that are real.  Also if everything on your site is an .aspx, make sure that you also alternative extensions (such as .asp and .htm).  You want the 404 to be trapped in all situations.

Set the trapping at the web server level also - Many web application environments (ASP.NET will be my example) allow you to set 404 traps at the application level.  This is fantastic, because I can set the trigger in the web.config and I have several options that are easy to change.  Don't stop there!  You should also set the 404 trap in the web server itself.  ASP.NET will often be set to only serve his content (.aspx extensions).  What if the link is broken and ASP.NET does not get fired for that request?  Always have a "fall back" back in the Web Server itself.

Don't forget the load balancers - Many of us have the luxury of running load balanced servers that are behind a hardware load balancing device.  These devices are great, but they add a level of complexity that you must plan for and test.  My example above where I created a nonsense URL might never reach my web server if the load balancer is doing certain inspections.  You have to make sure that the load balancer is also configured for proper 404 trapping.

Do as I say, not as I do - give me a day or so to get larryclarkin.com (and another domain that I own) to handle 404s properly. 

A sign on the door of the place where I get my morning bagel:

Recently [this bagel company] posted to its Web site a coupon for a free Pizza Bagel meal.  This coupon was intended for use only by a specific charity in the Denver, Colo. market.  Our restaurants in this market do not have this product and will not be honoring this coupon.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

Another in the long line of examples of how electronic distribution has changed the way our society works and how the traditional ways of doing things have not changed to keep up with the changes.

Note:  I kept the name of the bagel company out of this post at the request of the store manager.  I took a picture of the sign with my digital camera and she freaked out.  I told her that I was writing a blog item about it, but I would not include the picture in the blog post.

This blog has gotten more popular with one segment of the Internet: the sleazy people that use blog mechanisms for feedback like Pingback, Trackback and comments to spread link spam.  Most of the posts on this blog got slammed with dozens of links to porn, free ring tones and vacation home offers.  I apologize to anyone who clicked on a link and got something they did not want to see.  I spent a couple hours cleaning up the articles (dasBlog is great, but I could not find a mass delete feature) and I have now disabled PingBacks.  I suspect that in the next couple of days that I will get the same on the Trackback feature and have to shut that down as well.  It is a pity because I have actually had a couple of good Trackback entries.

I am drawing the line at comments, because I want someone way to hear from the people who are reading what I have to say (I have gotten some good comments lately, thank you!).  I do moderate the comments to keep the trash to a minimum, so if your comment does not show up for a day or so, please have patience.  I will always approve any comment (good or bad) from a real person that has something to say....unless you want to talk about free ring tones.

This morning I attended a "Birds of a Feather" session on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) at TechEd.  BOF sessions can be some of the most interesting at a conference, because they are not the traditional One to Many style of sessions that you normally see.  The room is setup with Whiteboards and Flip Charts and the seats are arranged so that the audience is facing each other.  The conversation is moderated, but the content and discussions are determined by the audience interest and it can get really interactive.  During the session we put together a great list of resources on CSS.  I grabbed my laptop and started taking notes, because I thought it would be great to capture all the good information.  I can not take credit for putting this together, it was done audience and by our Moderator Cheryl D. Wise (A Microsoft MVP), who runs the By-Expression.com community site and wrote the book on Expression Web.  I met Cheryl at the MIX conference last month (we actually shared a cab to the airport and talked standards and accessibility while waiting for our respective flights).

Stunning example of why going to CSS based sites makes business sense

CSS can greatly reduce the payload of your web page (compared to old school <table> and <font> style formatting).  I did not realize how much of an impact it can have until Cheryl mentioned two examples.  ESPN.com was able to removed 28 servers from their web farm by going to CSS layouts.  She also mentioned that a major software vendor told her their bandwidth usage dropped by 40% after going to CSS.  Those are real dollars that can be used to justify the cost of the transition.

Top 5 CSS Musts

Is it Content?  Content should go in the markup, but formatting and positioning should not.

Use Absolute Positioning with care.  When this was originally suggested it was "never use absolute positioning", but there are a few cases where it is appropriate but you should always question the use of it.

Limit inline styles.  Inline styles are when you have the style actually as part of the element.  Caution: Many of the older controls in ASP.NET are bad about using inline styles if you use the properties dialog.

Use Inheritance.  Inheritance within CSS is one of the harder items to understand (I speak from experience).  It is a powerful way to group alike items and dramatically reduces the size and complexity of your CSS.

Use the page structure as much as possible.  It is easy to go <div> crazy when you are creating your layout.  The example discussed was <div class="mastehead"><h1>My Title</h1></div> - it is okay (and preferred) to put the styling on the <h1> element and not create the extra <div> just to hold the styling.

Honorable mention - ALT elements on <img> tags.  This is very important, but we moved it out of the top 5 because it is required by the HTML specifications and not really a CSS must.

List of sites for CSS

www.csszengarden.com - fantastic example site that shows you what you can do with CSS.  Note - this one can be overwhelming to newbies and non-designers.

www.cssplay.co.uk - demos and resources for creating CSS.

www.quirksmode.com - an online book with test pages and explanations of many items about CSS and javascript.

www.positioniseverything.net - a site that list many common cross browser issues and solutions to them.

www.alistapart.com - a weekly magazine for web developers.

www.molly.com - Molly E. Holzschlag's web site.  If you ever get the chance, see her present.

www.W3schools.org - general reference site on CSS and many things web.

www.realworldstyle.com - a library of canned CSS layouts and resources.

www.oswd.org - open source web templates.

meyerweb.com/eric/css/ - Eric Meyer's CSS web site - because it would not be a list without Eric on it.

List of sites for Accessibility

www.section508.gov - official government site on accessibility standards.

www.Webaim.org - Web Accessibility training.

www.w3.org/wai - W3 Web Accessibility Initiative.

Bob Muglia and Doc Brown
Originally uploaded by jodieandlarry

Updated: Additional Information on Web Server role for Core was added. Thanks to Drew for pointing out the additional facts. 

The keynote at TechEd this morning was absolutely hilarious!  It was based on the Back to the Future movies and it even included Christopher Lloyd reprising his role as Doc Brown.  I hope that they will be releasing it as a Webcast so that you can check it out.  The poke some serious fun at past TechEd announcements that have not come true (do you remember "Hailstorm"?).  Doc Brown even showed off his latest invention the MSVSBSD - "Microsoft Vision Statement Bullshit Detector" that would honk anytime that Bob Muglia strayed from the path of showing real technologies and went into visionary statements.

The announcement that was of most interest to me was almost a "Oh by the way" type of announcement.  When they were demonstrating the new features of Windows Server 2008 they showed "Windows Server Core" which is a very dull demonstration (and that is the cool part about it).  It is a stripped down version of windows that includes only the bare bones to run a server role.  There is not even a GUI on the system and everything it done by command line.  Core has been talked about for a while, but there was always a role missing during the discussions.  They would list roles like File Server, DHCP and DNS.  But until today that did not include a web server (IIS) role.  Today it was announced as one of the supported roles, but there is one catch.  Server Core does not support managed code (at this time).  So IIS can be running, but not with applications that require the .NET Framework.  So you could use it for static sites, Classic ASP or other non-managed code (such as PHP).

Our friends over at Clarity Consulting are launching a new service to the developer community and they are calling it Clarity TV and it is a collection of screencasts.  Currently they have 3 up there: One on the new managed wrapper for Facebook that I mentioned last week and 2 sessions from last month's devcares events on Orcas and LINQ.  In addition to very interesting content the structure of the site itself could be a case study.  They are delivering the content via Silverlight 1.0 (Beta) and Windows Media Services.  They will be explaining how they built it at an upcoming CNUG meeting.  Not going to be in Chicago?  No problem, they have promised to post that event to Clarity TV also!