Microsoft supporting web startups and independent web developers by providing free software's for 3years
Microsoft has launched today a very exciting program called WebSiteSpark for individual developers and small web startup companies having less than 10 employees. Given below are few software licenses which will be given free to you for 3 years
- 3 licenses of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
- 1 license of Expression Studio 3 (which includes Expression Blend, Sketchflow, and Web)
- 2 licenses of Expression Web 3
- 4 processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 R2
- 4 processor licenses of SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
- DotNetPanel control panel (enabling easy remote/hosted management of your servers)
IMHO it is very good initiative by Microsoft to promote small companies and individuals to leverage their products and build next generation application on the web. More information can be found here http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/09/24/announcing-the-websitespark-program.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/web/WebSiteSpark
Saving Changes is not permitted.The changes you have made require the following tables to be dropped and recreated..Sql Server 2008 Management Studio Express Error
If you have just installed Sql Server 2008 Express Edition and you have your default settings then you probably might get this error when your want to change some table and then save changes. In the default settings “Prevent Saving changes that require table recreation” is checked which prevents to save the changes which you make in the design of the table. So in this article i will talk less and give you a walkthrough on how to remove this ugly error and to keep it explanatory i will use images rather then simple text. So the error looks like this 
Now the stepwise solution is :-
- Click Cancel on this screen and then click OK on the next screen.
- On the top menu bar select the Tools option and inside tools select the Options menuitem.
3.Inside options select the “Designer” and in the designer context form “uncheck” the option which says “Prevent Saving changes which requires recreation”. 4.Click OK and you are done and now save changes to your table and your error should no vanish. 
Happy Programming!!!!!!!!!!!!
Unable to connect to Sql Server 2008 Express Edition Remotely using the IP and the named instance
If you are trying to connect your sql server 2008 express edition instance remotely and facing problems while connecting it although you have tried all the possible solutions in the book then the problem can be a really very silly thing and what’s that thing , i will describe it shortly. If you are getting the below mentioned error then there might be many reasons for that error. A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.) (.Net SqlClient Data Provider) So in the list of probable reasons is :-
- Check if the sql server 2008 express edition service and sql server browser services are running or not, if not then please run them first.
- First check whether TCP/IP is enabled in the Sql Server Configuration Manager Tool and select the instance of sql server 2008 express edition for that, if not enabled enable it.
- If TCP/IP is enabled then check your firewall settings open two ports 1433 and 1434 on the firewall, generally 1433 is meant for Sql server and 1434 is meant for sql server browser. 1433 is TCP port and 1434 is UDP port
- The silly mistake which happens when working with sql server 2008 express edition is that by default it runs on dynamic ports so you can’t run it remotely with all the above configuration and it will lead to frustration.So what to do then, the solution is just go to properties of the TCP/IP and in the TCP Port just give whatever port you want your sql server to be run on.That will do the trick for you.
- After doing the port settings now check the firewall rules and open the respective ports which you have just configured and your sql server instance will run remotely.
Happy Programming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Adding Google Friend Connect to Blogengine.net Blog
Today i am shifting my blog from BlogSpot to custom domain, so i will be doing a series of post in all the hassles i have to face during this exercise and share my experience with you, so that any one else in plans of shifting the blog to custom domain and also the blog code being open source, should not face the same problems as i am facing. Smallworkarounds was known for its unique look and feel and various plugins customized in the heart of Google’s blogger.Still the new blog is not even close to the look and feel of the current BlogSpot version but its OK for now i will be rewriting the whole code myself within few days as i get time from my busy schedule. I will be writing mostly on how to transfer each module you see on Smallworkarounds on blogspot to www.smallworkarounds.com. For today i will be discussing how to integrate Google’s Friend Connect into BlogEngine.net. First of all let me tell you why i chose blogengine.net, the obvious reason is that i have already worked on blogengine.net and i am familier with most of its code and I can do tweaks to it’s code in no time. Secondly what i found after googling was that blogengine.net is the leader in the open source blog engines built in .net. Although there are few other competitors but again all comes to personal choice you can use anyone of the other products out there. I faced few issues with blogengine.net on Godaddy but i will be dealing those issues in the upcoming posts. So let’s begin the journey from what i am currently doing and leave the rest for future. Currently i have all my posts imported from blogger to blogengine.net with some minor errors which i am tweaking daily. In my blogspot blog i was having a Google Friend Connect toolbar which used to pop up at the bottom, but now the question is how to get the same popup bar with same followers in your blogengine.net blog with your custom domain. Googling a bit lead me to this post by Mayank Raichura , he has done all the hard work but what he has implemented is a little different from what i wanted. You can download his sample from here Hi implementation lets you to have google friend connect only inside the posts pages not on all the pages as this is clear from his code i modified his code a bit and everything then worked just fine for me.
public void CreateFriendConnectBar(ServingEventArgs e)
{
settings = ExtensionManager.GetSettings(GetType().Name);
//Settings should be retrieved after this...
string sb_Site_ID = settings.GetSingleValue("Site_ID").ToLower();
string sb_Div_Tag_ID = settings.GetSingleValue("Div_Tag_ID").ToLower();
string sb_Scope_of_Social_Bar = "SITE";
bool sb_Allow_Anonymous_Post = bool.Parse(settings.GetSingleValue("Allow_Anonymous_Post").ToLower());
//End Settings Retrieval
e.Body += "n<!-- Google_Friend_Connects_Social_Bar extension by Mayank Raichura -->n";
e.Body += BuildHTML(sb_Site_ID, sb_Div_Tag_ID, sb_Scope_of_Social_Bar, sb_Allow_Anonymous_Post);
}
private void Post_Serving(object sender, ServingEventArgs e)
{
post = (Post)sender;
CreateFriendConnectBar(e);
}
I removed his code where he is checking whether it is a post page or stuffs related to posts which he is checking in his first few lines and created a method called CreateFriendConnectBar(ServingEventArgs e) which i call from the Post_Serving event basically i am not checking that is the post null or something else, this will run in every case.
The important thing which you have to do other then what is stated is instead of this line
string sb_Scope_of_Social_Bar = "PAGE";
just replace “PAGE” with “SITE”, then just follow the instruction given on his blog to complete the steps.
string sb_Scope_of_Social_Bar = "SITE";
One more thing which most of you will forget is that consider a situation wherein from your previous blogspot blog your were having 2000 followers then you definitely would not want to lose your followers by just going and creating a absolutely new account for the new domain hosting.
So the solution for this is just go to your Google Friend Connect account and remap the url or site url field to your new website on the custom domain.
Also as a quick tip make sure your are having rpc_relay and canvas files in your website root folder.