Blog

Posts written in May 2019.

  • Published on
    -
    1 min read

    Kentico Cloud Certified

    Over the Bank Holiday weekend, I had some time to kill one evening and decided to have a go at completing the Kentico Cloud exam to become a certified developer. Taking the exam is a natural progression to warrant oneself as an expert on the platform, especially as I have been using Kentico Cloud since it was first released. Time to put my experience to the test!

    Unlike traditional Kentico CMS Developer exams, the Kentico Cloud exam consists of 40 questions to complete over a duration of 40 mins. The pass rate is still the same at 70%.

    Even though I have been using Kentico Cloud for many years, I highly recommend developers to get yourself certified providing you are familiar with the interface, built a few applications already and have exposure to the API endpoint. The exam itself is platform-agnostic and you won't be tested on any language-specific knowledge.

    The surprising thing I found after completing the exam is a higher awareness of what Kentico Cloud does not only as a platform but also touched upon areas you wouldn't have necessarily been familiar with. There certainly more to Kentico Cloud than meets the eye!

  • After renaming my MVC project from "SurinderBhomra" to "Site.Web" (to come across less self-serving) I get the following error:

    Compiler Error Message: CS0246: The type or namespace name 'xxx' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

    CS0246 Compiler Error - Temporary ASP.NET Files

    But the misleading part of this compiler error is the source file reference to ASP.NET Temporary Files directory, which led me to believe that my build was been cached when it was actually to do with the fact I missed some areas where the old project name still remained.

    I carried out a careful rename throughout my project by updating all the places that mattered, such as:

    • Namespaces
    • Using statements
    • "AssemblyTitle" and "AssemblyProduct" attributes in AssemblyInfo.cs
    • Assembly name and Default Namespace in Project properties (followed by a rebuild)

    The key area I missed that caused the above compiler error is overlooking the the namespace section in the /Views/web.config file.

    <system.web.webpages.razor>
      <host factorytype="System.Web.Mvc.MvcWebRazorHostFactory, System.Web.Mvc, Version=5.2.3.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35">
      <pages pagebasetype="System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage">
        <namespaces>
          ...
          ...
          ...
          <add namespace="System.Web">
          ...
          ...
          ...
        </add></namespaces>
      </pages>
    </host></system.web.webpages.razor>
    

    When you first create your project in Visual Studio, it automatically adds its original namespace to this file. This also goes for any other web.config you happen to have nested in other areas inside you MVC project.

  • Published on
    -
    3 min read

    Automatically Backing Up Plesk Data To Synology

    In light of my hosting issues over the last week, I decided it was time to take measures in ensuring all websites under my hosting provider are always backed up automatically. I generally take hosting backups offsite on an ad-hoc basis and entrust the hosting provider to keep up their end of the bargain by doing this on my behalf.

    If you are with a hosting provider (like I was previously - A2 Hosting), who talks the talk but can't actually walk the walk in regards to the service they offer, you will more than likely end up having backup woes. It's always best practice to take control of your own backups and if this can be automated, makes life so much easier!

    All Plesk panels have a "Backup Manager" area where you can action manual or scheduled backup processes. Depending on your hosting provider, the features shown in this area might be varied. Some have the option to backup straight to your Dropbox account. What we will be focusing on is remotely backing up our website data to our Synology NAS using FTP.

    Before we log into Plesk to select our Remote Backup option, we need to carry out some setup on our Synology.

    Port Forwarding for FTP and FTPS Protocols

    Most likely, your router will have a limited number of ports open to allow outside internet traffic to enter the local network. To make the most of your Synology, there is a recommended number of ports you need to open to make use of all the services.

    We are interested in opening to the following ports:

    • FTP: 21
    • FTPS: 990

    I prefer to send over any data using FTPS just for better security.

    You will have to login to your router settings to open ports. I would provide some instructions on how to do this, but every router is different. I just managed to find these settings hidden away in my own Billion router.

    Synology Setup

    Setting up FTP is pretty straight-forward. Just make sure you have administrative privileges to access the Control Panel.

    Enable FTP

    In Control Panel, go to: File services > FTP Tab.

    All we need to do here is to enable two FTP settings:

    • Enable FTP service (no encryption)
    • Enable FTP SSL/TLS encryption (FTPS)

    Synology Control Panel - Enable FTP

    The reason why I selected the "Enable FTP service (no encryption)" option is purely for initial testing purposes. If there are any issues when making a connection via FTP from a new service for the first time, I just like to ensure if a successful connection can be made via standard FTP. After my testing is done, I would disable this option.

    Create a Synology User

    I prefer to create a new user specifically for FTP connections rather than my main own account, as I have the ability to lock down access to only read and write permissions in its home directory. No Synology services or applications will be accessible.

    Synology FTP User Permissions

    The only application I allow my user to access is "FTP".

    Synology FTP User Application Permissions

    Plesk Backup Manager Setup

    FTP Configuration

    In Backup Manager, go to "Remote Storage Settings and select "FTP". Enter the following settings along with your user credentials:


    On clicking the "OK" or "Apply" button should return no errors. But if there are errors, check the logs and ensure you haven't missed any permissions for your Synology user.

    Set Backup Schedule

    Now we have set our remote storage settings, we now need to put a schedule in place to generate a backup on as often as we require. It's up to on how often you set the regularity of the backups. I've set mine to run daily at 11pm and retain these backups for a month.

    Plesk Scheduled Backup

    Make sure you set the Backup settings to store the backup in your newly created FTP storage.

    A Word To The Wise

    Just because we now have automatic backups running protecting us from any foreseen hosting issues, this doesn't mean we're all in the clear. Backups are useless to us if they don't work. I check my backups at least once a week and ensure the most recently backed up file is free from corruption and can be opened.

  • As great as it is building sites using the MVC framework in Kentico, I do miss some of the page features we’re spoilt with that previous editions of Kentico has to offer.

    Like anything, there are always workarounds to implement the features we have become accustomed to but ensuring the correct approach is key, especially when moving existing Kentico clients onto Kentico 12 MVC edition. Familiarity is ever so important for the longer tenure clients who already have experience using previous versions of Kentico.

    In my Syndicut Medium post, I show how to use Kentico's existing fields from the CMS_Document table to work alongside the new MVC approach.

    Take a read here: https://medium.com/syndicut/adding-navigation-properties-to-pages-in-kentico-12-mvc-8f054f804af2