If you arrived here, you probably were redirected from my original blog hosted for the last 5 1/2 years on http://weblogs.asp.net  I’ve had a desire to move my blog to my own domain for a while.  I selected DasBlog because I was able to import all my previous posts, which made the transition easier.   I’m going to give it a go to see how performance is.  If you are looking for particular article or post, please use the Search feature or TAG. 

So far, the one different thing is I’m using an external Blog Writer (Windows Live Writer) to post entries.   The other blog engine I evaluated was BlogEngine.net.  I liked the features offered, but I wasn’t able to import my original posts.   I’ve had a few external articles that I refer to, but my blog has a lot of reference things, including over 150 separate IIS posts.  I wanted to thank all individuals who developed both products and the BlogML tools.  This made the migration much, much easier.   One tip I can pass along for those who have Community Server.  I attempted to use IE7, IE8, Google Chrome and had issues exporting to the BlogML format.   Terri Morton from Neudesic pointed me in the direction to use Firefox 3.0.  This worked like a champ.  I’m not a regular user of Firefox, but this was kudo’s! 

I appreciate your patience during this transition and hopefully the search engines will re-index posts so they’ll be easier to search that way.  I’m going to keep an eye on popular articles and will create an external link list to posts. 

PS – Thanks to Microsoft for letting me host my blog for the last several years on Weblogs.asp.net. 

Thanks again and happy blogging.

Steve Schofield
Microsoft MVP – IIS

Test from Windows Live Writer

Test again!

They say a picture is worth a 1000 words, in this case it’s worth every one.  Recently in the forums @ http://forums.iis.net, a few posts came up people trying to setup FTP over SSL with an external firewall.  They were running into issues where they could connect, but couldn’t get a directory list.  After answering a few threads stating the configuration to support FTP over SSL with PASV ports.   I thought I would blog what few steps to complete the config.    This blog isn’t meant to be the ‘end all be all’, but will be a targeted post to help people visually.

I’m assuming you’ve installed FTP 7.  If not, here is an article to install FTP 7.   This is a great starter article and one I’d recommend for people looking for a secure FTP over SSL solution.  (Assuming you have Windows Server 2008 / FTP 7.x of course)

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/263/installing-and-troubleshooting-ftp75/

Also, I’m assuming you configured your server to use an SSL certificate.  If not, here is an article that can assist setting this up.

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/304/using-ftp-over-ssl/

First thing: Define a range of PASV TCP ports on your router or firewall.  From my days of running WS-FTP server, they used ports 4900 – 4910 by default.    I got hooked and use these ones.  The ports can be anything.  If you are not sure, check with your network admin.

Secondly – Open IIS Manager, select the computer name, open FTP Firewall Support

Next, type in the Data Channel Port Range and external IP address.   The External IP address can be left blank and filled in at a site level.  The port range will be inherited by each site.  Assuming you have static IP address on each site, there won’t be an issue sharing this range across multiple FTP sites.

TEST, TEST, TEST

You can use FileZilla, CoreFTP to test your connections.

Between the two articles on http://learn.iis.net, and this added tidbit, you should have a secure FTP solution over port 21.   I’ve not tried using port 990 for FTP recently, I’ve done it in the past but it’s been too long, so I stick with port 21, require SSL and open a few PASV ports. 

Hope this helps,

Steve Schofield

Microsoft MVP – IIS

Resources.

http://blogs.iis.net/jaroslad/archive/2007/09/29/windows-firewall-setup-for-microsoft-ftp-publishing-service-for-iis-7-0.aspx

http://support.ipswitch.com/kb/FS-20051115-DM01.htm

Check out Robert’s blog (IIS Team FTP guru)
http://blogs.iis.net/robert_mcmurray/default.aspx

Here is a comparison document on the various versions of IISLogs.

This can help determine which version of IISLogs can help your business.

http://www.iislogs.com/comparison.aspx

Cheers,

Steve