Author: Nicola
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SEO – When your webpage suddenly disappears on Google SERP
Today, I noticed one of the pages in my client’s site disappeared from the Google SERP. It was on the 2nd page of Google for a specific search keyword, but it can no longer be found anywhere in the SERP at all. When I do the trick of searching for “site:{DOMAIN_URL_HERE}”, all other pages in…
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Azure Virtual Machines – Benefits of developing in the Cloud
It’s now over a year since I started developing on Azure Virtual Machines and while it’s not cheap (more on this later), it’s hard for me to go back and develop locally on physical machines. In this post, I’ll go over the advantages of owning and developing on a Virtual Machine hosted in the cloud.…
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How to generate an Umbraco XML Sitemap dynamically
Today, I implemented an XML sitemap in my Umbraco 7.7.9 installation. Here are the things I had to do: Create a Sitemap document type Create a Sitemap macro Create a rule for IIS URL rewriting of the sitemap.xml Author the Sitemap content page Sitemap document type My document type involves two properties which will allow…
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How to setup a web app with Cloudflare CDN
I had a live web app in Azure that I wanted to hook up with a CDN using Cloudflare. Good news – Cloudflare has a free Global CDN offering and so I didn’t have to pay anything to use it. For more details about what other features you can have with a free account, see…
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Cloudflare Infinite Redirect Loop error
I have just recently re-imported my Azure web apps into Cloudflare and while some of them worked smoothly, two of my sites (domain & subdomain) did not. These sites went down after about 24 hours and was throwing an infinite redirect loop error, saying it’s being redirected too many times. It turns out that the…
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How to use Unity in an Umbraco solution
I have almost always used Unity in my applications but today I’ve had to fix broken code due to a recent installation of Unity in an Umbraco solution. While you can install Unity just like you would on any other ASP.NET application, it turns out that there are some Umbraco controllers/types that you need to…
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How to workaround an Azure Virtual Machine that’s stuck in “Starting” state
I’ve encountered this a couple of times and from experience, it’s usually either after any of the below: Disk resize – in my case, I increased my disk size from 120gb to 200gb Installation of Windows upgrades in the VM Most of the time you can just navigate to your Virtual Machine > Support+Troubleshooting >…
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How to setup Continuous Delivery right within Visual Studio 2017
I noticed the other day a new section on the Publish page in Visual Studio that allows developers to setup Continuous Delivery right within VS 2017: So I gave it a try and was honestly impressed at how easy it was to configure. Follow the screenshots below: Hit OK and wait for it to run.…
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How to migrate SDF database to Sql Server
Umbraco’s site installation comes with an SDF database. For obvious reasons, I needed to migrate this to SQL Server. Below are the steps I took to make it work. Before proceeding to the steps below, you will need to install following: ExportSqlCE40.exe which you can download from here SQL Server Compact 4.0 Runtime from here…
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Register your app for authentication on the Azure Active Directory
To trust Azure Active Directory users on your application, you will need to create an app registration on Azure. Portal > Active Directory > App registrations > + New application registration Fill up the details of your app. The sign-on URL can be changed later so you can enter a local site…