Step 1: Install the UrlRewrite module for IIS: http://www.iis.net/expand/URLRewrite

Step 2: Add the following rule to your applications web.config file:

<configuration>
 <system.webServer>
    <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <clear />
        <rule name="Redirect from www" stopProcessing="true">
           <match url=".*" />
           <conditions>
              <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^www.yoursite.com$" />
           </conditions>
           <action type="Redirect" url="http://yoursite.com/{R:0}" redirectType="Permanent" />
        </rule>
     </rules>
   </rewrite>
 </system.webServer>
</configuration>

IMPORTANT: When using the above code, take care to merge it with your existing web.config without duplicating any existing elements.

I like my URL’s to be in the format http://mysite.com. If you prefer http://www.mysite.com, simply remove “www.” from the <add> element and add it to the <action> element’s “url” attribute.

In an increasingly hyper-competitive world, businesses look for every possible opportunity that can give them an edge over their competition. It’s no secret — businesses that innovate survive and win, and those that don’t either die, don’t grow or become the walking dead.

But innovation isn’t easy. In fact, it is a challenge for most companies. There are many reasons for this – corporate culture, inertia, risk-aversion – but I think the biggest reason is “expertise.” The quote I have on my desktop wallpaper sums it up nicely:

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”

– Shunryu Suzuki

I have this quote on my desktop because it’s a constant reminder that as I become more familiar with a technology or business skill, my ability to come up with innovative ideas about that technology or business area decreases. This is my totally unscientific thesis at a personal level; your experience may differ, but I suspect not by much. Since businesses are primarily just people doing stuff, the corollary is that businesses face the same issue – dearth of innovation due to expertise.

So if a business can’t look internally to its employees, where should it look for those innovative ideas that will propel it to the next level? (NO, the answer is definitely not consultants.) The best source of innovative ideas for your business is your customers and the best place to engage them for these ideas is online.

Many companies have discovered that the same concepts that work amazingly well on a personal and social level with FaceBook and MySpace, work equally well for business (albeit without any sheep being thrown about in the process). Creating an online community for your business is an effective way to engage your customers online and provide a direct channel to them, bereft of the hierarchical and departmental boundaries that stifle discussion and open dialog offline. This should not come as a surprise, after all “people want to connect with people; people want to help and be helped” (Study: Tribalization of Business). Chances are that if you follow some basic guidelines, you can very quickly and easily engage your customers and make innovation an open and collaborative process.

One company that has been successful in creating such an online customer community is ExactTarget. The company has been a long-time sponsor of the DotNetNuke project (thanks!). The “3sixty” community site it created for its customers using DotNetNuke Professional Edition is a prime example of best practices for creating online communities recommended by HiveLive, a SAAS provider of enterprise online customer communities. Since 3sixty was created, the site has become a key competitive differentiator for ExactTarget resulting in over 100 customer-suggested feature innovations into its product. You can get the straight scoop on how ExactTarget achieved this by attending the free webinar “ExactTarget: Using DotNetNuke to Build an Interactive Business Community” on Aug. 26, 2009 (download a recording of the video by following the link if you are reading this after Aug. 26).

While ExactTarget could have developed a custom ASP.NET solution for this site, it selected DotNetNuke because of its ability to easily integrate with existing web-based business applications while providing a robust platform for rapid application development. Let me stop myself right here and not get carried away discussing the merits of DotNetNuke as an excellent platform for building online communities. It is very tempting to look at creating such communities as a technology problem and delve into a discussion about features, API’s and such. But as Dion Hinchcliffe accurately points out in Twelve Best Practices for Online Customer Communities, “community is mostly not a technology problem.” Indeed, as he points out, platforms like DotNetNuke make it easy to create compelling communities. (If you are reading this on DotNetNuke.com, you are looking at the best evidence to support this claim.) Creating successful online business communities is more an exercise in adapting your business to a new form of customer engagement and creating the social architecture for such a community.

In order to succeed, here is a summation of HiveLive’s recommendations:

Best Practice #1: Build a community with clear goals in mind Start with a narrow and tightly defined scope and develop the community structure from there. This is essential for rallying members and motivating them to contribute. Be prepared to expand the scope quickly as the community evolves.

Best Practice #2: Motivate your members Online community members are power users, participants or spectators. Explore ways to keep power users engaged to ensure a steady stream of relevant and authentic content. This in turn will motivate others to play a more active role. Also, think of ways in which you can compensate participants. Compensation, does not have to be monetary – insider status, avatars, recognition, they all work.

Best Practice #3: Use Design Thinking Principles Design Thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result. Using this approach can establish ground rules and foster a culture of crowd-sourced innovation in an online community.

Best Practice #4: Build a Culture of Openness Direct engagement through genuine interactions will yield significant benefits and convince more members to participate in the innovation process. Don’t try to control the conversation, listen more than you talk, and make sure the culture of openness is not just a façade. Although painful at first, such a culture is critical to the success of an online community.

Best Practice #5: Remain Dedicated to Continuous Improvement View your online community as a journey, instead of a technology initiative with a defined end-point. Committing to a posture of cultivation will yield tangible results in the form of a steady flow of innovative ideas from the community. This also builds trust and gives members a greater sense of ownership as their ideas and suggestions are realized.

Has your company created an online business community? Do share! What were the challenges you faced? What did you learn from the experience?

If you have not created an online business community yet, hopefully this post and the webinar will give you some ideas that will help guide you in the process.

1) Open the existing project’s .csproj file in a text editor.

2) Add the following two lines of code anywhere within the first element:

Web
$(Registry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\ServiceHosting\v1.0@InstallPath)

Reload the project and it now becomes available as a WebRole.

1) I only keep the
assemblies unlikely to change in bin (i.e. components, third-party libs
etc.). I put my app’s assemblies into a sub-folder of bin and name the
folder according to the date (for example: bin\20080801)

2) My web.config has the following:

When
I need to update assemblies, I just upload them into a new sub-folder
in bin, again with a name corresponding to the current date
(bin\20080812). After the upload is complete, I upload web.config with
a change to the sub-folder name. The app re-starts and picks up the new
assemblies and forgets about the old sub-folder assemblies which I can
leave or delete.

Seems to work and has the added benefit of speeding up the app start since the sub-folder assemblies are ignored until needed.

1) Building Stuff: I love working with tools and making things. My first project was to build a swing set for my daughters. I got lumber from Lowe’s and built one from scratch. My kids love it and it’s great not having to drive down to the playground every day.

My second project is to build earth boxes, five to be precise. Savi wants to grow vegetables and the earth boxes are the perfect solution. It’s labor intensive to build one, but not very difficult. I have completed one and am working on the rest.

2) Baking: I love bread but rarely find bread I like at the store. Solution — bake my own. Savi got me a bread-maker for my birthday and I love it. So far I have baked a loaf of plain, white bread and yesterday, I baked a walnut-raisin loaf. I am not much of a cook and making eggs is the extent of my culinary expertise. But after baking this bread, I am beginning to see why so many people love to cook. It is quite relaxing and to have an end product that family and friends can enjoy is quite rewarding.

3) Mixing: As I have mentioned on this blog before, I am an avid fan of A/V. Until about 2003, one of my favorite things to do was to V.J. parties and weddings for friends. I never did it for money as then it would become work and stop being fun. After moving to DC in 2003, I never did any gigs until last week. Friday (8/8/08), my friends Todd and Diana got married in Napa. My daughter Gia was the flower girl and I had the honor of providing the entertainment for the wedding. Since I did not want to abandon the wife and kids during the reception, I did something novel (for me) — I created a video mix on DVD for the entire evening’s entertainment. Everything from the bride/groom dances to the various dance sets were all on DVD and all I had to do was press Play. I used an 80′s theme and mixed lots of music videos from the decade along with an intro scene from “Back to the Future,” Todd’s favorite movie. I enjoyed making the mix so much, that I am now motivated to create more DVD mixes of my kids photos/videos for family back in India.

4) Software: This item is more about broadening my skills beyond ASP.Net and DotNetNuke. I have been an avid fan of Google AppEngine since the day it went live. Since I had no prior knowledge of Python or Django, I had to come up to speed fast. I attended a few meet-ups at Google and picked-up a copy of Python Power. Between the book and the meet-ups and just tinkering with code, I now have progressed far enough to create fairly advanced apps on AppEngine in Python. I plan on continuing to learn more advanced concepts and focus on developing a single application that will also be the basis of my AppEngine presentation at the DotNetNuke OpenForce / SDN Conference in Amsterdam this October. More about this application in a future post.

5) Teaching: I love to teach kids. It doesn’t matter what the subject matter is, it’s just fun to be able to share and help them learn. This summer, I have undertaken to teach my 12-year-old nephew how to program, continuing indefinitely. After researching the topic, I settled on Phrogram as the language to use for instruction. So far, I am quite impressed with everything about the IDE and the language. I setup a virtual machine, put it on a DVD and mailed it to him (he is not allowed to use the Internet other than for class assignments). He was able to install VPC, get the virtual machine up and running and write his first Phrogram. I will have some detailed blog posts about my experience on this in the near future also.

Yes, it’s true that three of the five things require time in front of the computer. But they still represent a shift and have helped me achieve my goals.

Dear Nik Kalyani,  

I am honored. Thanks Microsoft.

http://www.techbubble.net/Blog/tabid/57/EntryId/180/InfoWorld-Rates-DotNetNuke-Very-Good.aspx [...]]]> InfoWorld’s recent comparison of Open Source web CMS systems gave DotNetNuke high marks with a “Very Good” rating. DotNetNuke was the only ASP.NET-based contender in the field of five. We are working hard on many exciting new enhancements and it won’t be long before we will bridge the gap from “Very Good” to “Excellent.”