Inexperience is the handmaiden of panic, panic is the father of mistakes.

– Erich Hartmann

Drush is a command line shell and scripting interface for Drupal. If you’re looking for something similar in WordPress check out:

1. WP-CLI or WordPress Command Line
2. WPshell

“GlobalSign’s root keys and intermediate issuing CA’s have been 2048 bit since 1998. In order to comply with today’s best practice and minimum standards for security suggested by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) it is highly recommended that end entity certificates should also have 2048 bit RSA keys. Please note that from October 31st 2010 this will be the minimum acceptable level for all keys and as such 1024 bit RSA keys will no longer be allowed by GlobalSign“.

In Microsoft IIS 6.0, yes I know it’s a 10-year-old web server, when renewing a certificate, Microsoft IIS retains some key information from the certificate that has already been installed, including the key size.  In order to change the key size in IIS, you must remove the certificate which has the effect of taking down your website on port 443. The steps below are an alternate way to increase the size of the certificate without causing any downtime to your website.

Part I – Create a Temporary Website

1. Open IIS Manager
2. Right-click on the Web Sites folder and select New and Web Site from the drop down menu
3. The Web Site Creation Wizard will appear.  Click Next
4. On the Web Site Description screen, type in “Temporary” into the Description field and click Next
5. On the IP Address and Port Settings screen, leave the defaults as is and click Next
6. On the Web Site Home Directory screen, click on Browse and then select a folder on the computer and click OK
7. Click the Next button
8. On the Web Site Access Permissions screen, uncheck all the boxes and click Next
9. Click on the Finish
10. In the IIS Manager window, right-click on the Temporary website you created and select Stop from the drop down menu.

Part II – Create a CSR for the Temporary Website

1. Open IIS Manager
2. Right-click on the temporary website that you created in Part I and click on Properties from the drop down menu.
3. On the Temporary website properties window, click on the Directory Security tab
4. On the Secure communications section, click Server Certificate
5. The Welcome to the Web Server Certificate Wizard will appear. Click Next
6. On the Server Certificate screen, select Create a new certificate and click Next
7. On the Delayed or Immediate Request screen, select Prepare the request now, but send it later and click Next
8. On the Name and Security Settings screen:
• Enter a Friendly Name for your certificate e.g. Website Name. This is useful when identifying the certificate in Part IV
• From the Bit length drop down select the bit length value recommended by your SSL certificate provider e.g. 2048
• Leaving the Select cryptographic service provider (CSP) for this certificate unchecked
• Click Next
9. On the Organization Information screen:
• Enter the name of the company in the Organization field
• Enter the name of the department in the Organizational unit field
• Click Next
10. On the Your Site’s Common Name screen, enter the website address or Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) for your site. e.g. temporary.com and click Next
11. On the Geographical Information screen:
• Select the country of your organization from the Country/Region drop down
• Select the State/ province of that country
• Select the City/ locality
• Click Next
12. On the Certificate Request File Name screen, select a location to save the CSR file. To do this:
• Click on Browse and then select a folder on the computer and click OK
• Click Next
13. On the Request File Summary screen, you will see a summary of the certificate details.  Click Next to generate the CSR file
14. Click Finish
15. Follow the instructions from your SSL provider’s website to submit the CSR contents. Your SSL provider will typically send you an e-mail with the certificate details and ask you to save this as a file to a location on your computer.

Part III – Install the SSL certificate on the Temporary Website

1. Open IIS Manager
2. Right-click on the temporary website that you created in Part I and click on Properties from the drop down menu.
3. On the Temporary website properties window, click on the Directory Security tab
4. In the Secure communications section, click Server Certificate
5. The Welcome to the Web Server Certificate Wizard will appear. Click Next
6. On the Pending Certificate Request screen, select Process the pending request and install the certificate and click Next
7. On the Process a Pending Request screen, click on Browse and then select the path to the file containing the certificate details and click OK
8. Click Next
9. On the SSL Port screen, leave the SSL port as displayed and click Next
10. On the Certificate Summary screen click Next
11. Click Finish

Part IV – Assign the SSL Certificate to the Production Website

1. Open IIS Manager
2. Right-click on the production website that was setup with the old 1024-bit certificate and click on Properties from the drop down menu.
3. On the production website properties window, click on the Directory Security tab
4. In the Secure communications section, click Server Certificate
5. The Welcome to the Web Server Certificate Wizard will appear. Click Next
6. On the Modify the Current Certificate Assignment screen, select Replace the current certificate and click Next
7. On the Available Certificates screen, select the newly installed certificate based on the friendly name that you provided in Part II and click Next
8. On the Replace Certificate screen, click Next
10. On the production website Properties screen, click OK
11. Test the production website in a browser to confirm that the certificate was successfully applied

Part V – Delete the Temporary Website

1. Open IIS Manager
2. Right-click on the temporary website that you created in Part I and click on Delete from the drop down menu.
3. When prompted with “Are you sure you want to delete this item?” click Yes

The hardest part with creating reports is when you have to deal with inconsistent data in fields. When expecting time to be represented as hh:mm:ss (e.g. 01:02:03) and instead you receive a mix of h:mm:ss (1:02:03) and mm:ss (62:03), it’s easiest to use a function that converts the inconsistent time data to a value that’s easier to report on, or run subsequent calculations on.

In the example below, the SQL function does a quick check to count the number of occurrences of the time separator, in this case ‘:’, and then proceeds to calculate each time partition as the corresponding seconds value.

USE [Database]
GO
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

-- =============================================
-- Description:	Function to convert inconsistent hh:mm:ss value to seconds
-- Syntax: SELECT dbo.FunctionConvertToSeconds('hh:mm:ss')
-- =============================================
ALTER FUNCTION [dbo].[FunctionConvertToSeconds]
(
	@InputTime varchar(8)
)
RETURNS int
AS
BEGIN

DECLARE @SearchString varchar(1), @SearchStringPosition int, @SearchStringOccurrence int, @InputTimeHour int, @InputTimeMinute int, @InputTimeSecond int, @InputTimeLength int, @OutputSeconds int;

SET @SearchString = ':';

SET @InputTimeLength = LEN(@InputTime);

SET @SearchStringOccurrence = (LEN(@InputTime) - LEN(REPLACE(@InputTime, @SearchString, ''))) /LEN(@SearchString)

IF (@SearchStringOccurrence = 1)
	BEGIN
		IF (@InputTimeLength = 5)
			BEGIN
				SET @SearchStringPosition = CHARINDEX(@SearchString, @InputTime);
				SET @InputTimeMinute = CAST(SUBSTRING(@InputTime, 0, @SearchStringPosition) AS int);
				SET @InputTimeSecond = CAST(SUBSTRING(@InputTime, @SearchStringPosition + 1, @InputTimeLength) AS int);
				SET @OutputSeconds = (@InputTimeMinute * 60) +  @InputTimeSecond;
			END
		IF (@InputTimeLength < 5)
			BEGIN
				SET @SearchStringPosition = CHARINDEX(@SearchString, @InputTime);
				SET @InputTimeMinute = CAST(SUBSTRING(@InputTime, 0, @SearchStringPosition) AS int);
				SET @InputTimeSecond = CAST(SUBSTRING(@InputTime, @SearchStringPosition + 1, @InputTimeLength) AS int);
				SET @OutputSeconds = (@InputTimeMinute * 60) +  @InputTimeSecond;
			END
	END

IF (@SearchStringOccurrence = 2)
	BEGIN
		IF (@InputTimeLength = 8)
			BEGIN
				SET @SearchStringPosition = CHARINDEX(@SearchString, @InputTime);
				SET @InputTimeHour = CAST(SUBSTRING(@InputTime, 0, @SearchStringPosition) AS int);
				SET @InputTime = SUBSTRING(@InputTime, @SearchStringPosition + 1, @InputTimeLength);
				SET @SearchStringPosition = CHARINDEX(@SearchString, @InputTime);
				SET @InputTimeMinute = CAST(SUBSTRING(@InputTime, 0, @SearchStringPosition) AS int);
				SET @InputTimeSecond = CAST(SUBSTRING(@InputTime, @SearchStringPosition + 1, @InputTimeLength) AS int);
				SET @OutputSeconds = (@InputTimeHour * 360) + (@InputTimeMinute * 60) +  @InputTimeSecond;
			END
		IF (@InputTimeLength > 5 AND @InputTimeLength < 8)
			BEGIN
				SET @SearchStringPosition = CHARINDEX(@SearchString, @InputTime);
				SET @InputTimeHour = CAST(SUBSTRING(@InputTime, 0, @SearchStringPosition) AS int);
				SET @InputTime = SUBSTRING(@InputTime, @SearchStringPosition + 1, @InputTimeLength);
				SET @SearchStringPosition = CHARINDEX(@SearchString, @InputTime);
				SET @InputTimeMinute = CAST(SUBSTRING(@InputTime, 0, @SearchStringPosition) AS int);
				SET @InputTimeSecond = CAST(SUBSTRING(@InputTime, @SearchStringPosition + 1, @InputTimeLength) AS int);
				SET @OutputSeconds = (@InputTimeHour * 360) + (@InputTimeMinute * 60) +  @InputTimeSecond;
			END
	END

IF (@SearchStringOccurrence > 2)
	BEGIN
		SET @OutputSeconds = -1;
	END	
            
RETURN @OutputSeconds;
END

Any suggestions for a more efficient way to calculate the final seconds conversion?

One of the applications I work with frequently is a product called BMC Remedy. This application can generate a number of different types of e-mail alerts for various actions performed using Remedy. Testing these actions without spamming users can sometimes be challenging. If you’re in a similar boat trying to test emails from an application, but don’t necessarily want it sending them out try using Papercut – a desktop version of the web based DummySMTP product available. If all you need is to verify that the application can send email and be able to review the contents of the message, Papercut is a perfect program for this.

To setup Papercut, follow the steps below:

1. Download Papercut and run the Papercut.exe application

   

2. Click Options to configure Papercut to run on a specific IP adress and port as shown in the figure. Once configured, setup your application to use the respective IP address or port that you setup for Papercut.

   

3. When new mail arrives, an alert will appear in the System Status tray as shown:

   

4. If you’d like, you can forward a message to the appropriate destination e-mail address by clicking on Forward
   
   

*If the primary link for Papercut is unavailable, you may download Papercut from this secondary download location.

When trying to setup new name servers in GoDaddy’s domain manager, I received an error message “Nameserver not registered”.

For GoDaddy to recognize new name  servers they may have to be registered via the following steps:

1. Access the GoDaddy Domain Manager
2. Click on the domain you’d like to add the name servers for
3. In the lower left hand corner, look for the ‘Host Summary’ section
4. Add the new host e.g. ns1 and set it to point to the appropriate IP address.