05.06.08

Powershell Provider for IIS7

Posted in Work at 1:09 pm by JohnB

I just found out that there is now available a Powershell Provider for IIS7. This VERY cool piece of Powershell gubbins allows you, in very easy steps, to:-

Create Web-Sites, Web Applications, Virtual Directories and Application Pools
Change Simple Configuration Properties on Web-Sites, Application Pools, Web Applications and Virtual Directories
Add and Change Complex Configuration Settings
Query Run-time Data (Web-Site State, Application Pool State, Currently Executing Requests)
Execute Advanced Configuration Tasks, Scripting, Integration with other PowerShell Snap-Ins and features
Search and Discover Configuration Settings

Here’s a very quick example of how powerfull this stuff is… with the Provider installed the following powershell command creates a site in IIS7! (Line break for formatting purposes!)

New-Item iis:\Sites\TestSite -bindings @{protocol="http";bindingInformation=":80:TestSite"}
 -physicalPath c:\test

This is going to be REALLY useful for anyone who wants to automate the deployment of IIS7 web sites and services on Windows Server 2008. For a full walk-through of this fantastic addition to Powershell check out the learn.iis.net site.

- J.

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05.05.08

Widgetising the blog - Twitter notes.

Posted in Home at 8:16 pm by JohnB

I’ve taken the decision to widgetise this blog.. notice any difference?? Nope me neither! That’s a GOOD thing…

The one element I did have problems with was the Twitter Tools widget. See, when I first added the twitter list into the side bar I made a couple of changes. Instead of having the text title I used the Tweet bubble graphic from the Twitter site. I though (and still think) that it looks better and also provide be a nice place to stick a link directly to me twitter feed.

However… when I used the Twitter Tools widget, this piece of prettiness disappeared and I was stuck back with the text title again.. not what I wanted at all.

I messed around with the widget code a little to try and force my leetle piece of fun in there but it just wouldn’t seem to work. Then I had a blast of inspiration - actually it was about 6 hours later after I’d been out for the day and put the problem to ‘park’ - don’t use the widget!

Not as mental as it sounds… the code I had in the theme sidebar file works.. therefor all I need to do is plonk that code into the new shiny PHP widget I installed and BINGO everything is pretty again!

For you edification here it the code I dropped into the PHP widget:-

        <h2><a style="font-size: 10px; text-decoration: none"
href="http://twitter.com/silesti">
<img src="http://static.twitter.com/images/twitter_bubble_logo.gif"
border="0" /></a><?php _e(''); ?></h2>