Learn how to make an easy SQL Server Script that will automatically back up all your databases in a simple way.

If you are editing the stylesheet in Visual Web Developer, and you access the font-family dropdown, Microsoft shows 3 common web-safe fonts and then every font in your system. 

This is dumb.  Most of us designers have many, many fonts that the average web browsing public has never heard of. 

Therefore, I present this list of Web Safe Fonts.  Use this list in the font-family  settings to achieve the effect you want, with maximum web compatibility.

Here's some copy-and-paste code that I use weekly.  Bookmark it and save yourself hours!

Maybe I'm cynical, but as a developer meeting with a prospective client to gather requirements, I always wait for that one "gotcha" that turns a simple, straightforward project into a potential daymare. 

Using this quickie code snippet, you can attach an ASP:Gridview  to an external RSS Feed.

All you need to accomplish this is the URL of a usable feed.

In this article, you will be shown a few generic methods to optimize your SQL queries.  This information is not database-specific (other than in a few places) and should apply to any SQL based database.

Error: Windows could not start the SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS) on Local Computer. For more information, review the System Event Log. If this is a non-Microsoft service, contact the service vendor, and refer to service-specific error code -2146885628.

The Solution: Opened the "properties" dialog for the service, and on the Log On tab, changed the user from "This Account" to "Local System Account".  Started the service, and bingo.

Think globally, act locally.  How many times have you needed to determine the geographic distance between two places?  This tutorial will show you how to accomplish just that.

All data and functions exist in a SQL Server Database, and can be used in VB.NET, C#.NET, Paradox, Delphi, or any other language that can call a database function.

This article will show how to access a function in a legacy COM dll from a ASP.NET web page. By legacy I mean a dll that is not a .NET managed code dll (a Win32 DLL). 

When designing a WinForms application, the most straightforward way to authenticate a user is using NTLM or Active Directory using WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent. Over the Internet, you can use the whole ASP.Net security setup with Membership.GetUser. The GenericPrincipal object works well when you deploy to a mixed web/WinForms environment. See new GenericIdentity.

There is a way to configure your ASP.NET website with one configuration for your internal development environment and another for your online website - and still be able to publish your site without hand editing the web.config.

Get rid of the boring default icon on your website.  Add a custom icon!  Most browsers support .ico and the most popular ones will show any standard web image. 

Follow this easy step by step to add one to your web page or site.

Example: This is Prestwood.com's icon. 

There is no need to manually control the rendering of your site to alter layout. There is an easy CSS based feature that can be used to format your entire site for whatever options you need.

In this article we will see how to make the same site render automatically for screen, print, and handheld. There are other media types that can be used, but these will be the most common for daily use.

When designing websites, all developers are required to manage not only the content of the site, but the indexing of the site as well.  Robots.txt is a powerful tool you can use to make sure your projects are listed in search engines as effectively as possible.

This code shows how to ask the webserver where the site's root directory is, and how to convert a relative path (like /Uploads) to the full filesystem path.  This will work across environments (i.e. Development/QA/Production).

This code snippet will send a very quick email. Note that this code will not work as-is. You need to have valid email accounts and a valid email server to send a real email.

You need to add: using System.Net.Mail;

This will show how to make a "hello world" console application in Visual Studio 2008 with C#. Let VS.Net do the work and create a new console application using the menu. Use Console.WriteLine and Console.ReadLine for simple input and output.

A collection of regular expressions that validate and parse common user data.

This tutorial shows how you would create a trigger in Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 that will date/timestamp a column named last_updated everytime any data in the row is updated.

This example assumes a primary key that includes 3 fields.

Retrieves an array of all the components of any given type within a starter control (such as a page, table, panel, etc.)  This routine is recursive and will keep iterating down until all the embedded components are found.

This C# code can be invoked to produce an array as  follows:

Demonstrates the code required to retreive and store a file uploaded via an ASP FileUpload object.  Assumes you have a web form with a FileUpload, a button, and a label control.  Also, this example stores the file uploaded into a folder named "Uploads" which is assumed to pre-exist.

First, you must add the System.Net.Mail namespace to your project. There are 2 objects we use to send the email, a MailMessage, and an SMTPClient.

This code works from C# projects or from ASP.NET projects. Make sure your mail server is set to relay messages for whoever might be sending the message. In my case my webserver is sending through my exchange server so I had to tell exchange to relay for my webserver.