Xdebug is a very popular PHP extension that helps with debugging and profiling of PHP scripts by providing a lot of valuable debug information. Microsoft WebMatrix is a development tool for building web applications. When WebMatrix is used to build or modify a PHP-based web application the debugging tasks can be greatly simplified if Xdebug extension is used. This post explains how to install and use Xdebug extension with WebMatrix.

Step 1: Enable PHP in WebMatrix from the site “Settings” page:



Note that if you installed any of the PHP applications from the Application Gallery then PHP will be automatically enabled.

Step 2: Download the appropriate build of Xdebug extension from downloads page. If your site uses PHP 5.2 then download “5.2 VC6 Non-thread safe (32 bit)”. If your site uses PHP 5.3 then download “5.3 VC9 Non-thread safe (32 bit)”. Use 32 bit build even if your Windows OS is 64 bit.

Step 3: Install the extension by copying the downloaded file to the following locations:

-          For PHP 5.2 on Windows 64 bit:
C:\Program Files (x86)\IIS Express\PHP\v5.2\ext\

-          For PHP 5.2 on Windows 32 bit:
C:\Program Files\IIS Express\PHP\v5.2\ext\

-          For PHP 5.3 on Windows 64 bit:
C:\Program Files (x86)\IIS Express\PHP\v5.3\ext\

-          For PHP 5.3 on Windows 32 bit:
C:\Program Files\IIS Express\PHP\v5.3\ext\

Step 4: Open the php.ini file located in the PHP installation folder, e.g.
C:\Program Files\IIS Express\PHP\v5.2\php.ini and append the following at the end (make sure that the absolute path is correct for your version of PHP and Windows.):

[xdebug] 
zend_extension = C:\Program Files\iis express\PHP\v5.2\ext\php_xdebug-2.1.0-5.2-vc6-nts.dll

Step 5: Configure PHP to display errors by changing these PHP settings in php.ini file:

display_errors = On  
error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE 

Step 6: Test that extension is enabled and works by either calling a phpinfo() function from a script or by running a buggy script:



The Xdebug extension provides a lot of useful features that help with debugging of PHP applications. You can learn more about them from the Xdebug documentation. For example you can use it to profile a PHP application. Just change the php.ini file as shown below and then make a request to a PHP script:

[xdebug] 
zend_extension = C:\Program Files\iis express\PHP\v5.2\ext\php_xdebug-2.1.0-5.2-vc6-nts.dll  
xdebug.profiler_enable = On  
xdebug.profiler_output_dir = C:\Windows\temp 

The profile log will be saved into the specified directory and will have a name cachegrind.out.* Use WinCacheGrind to open and analyze it:

I was about to blog how we can redirect domain.com to www.domain.com (redirecting can improve SEO ranking, tune to next post for more detail) in IIS 7. But before that I thought let me first blog how to connect with remote website through IIS manager. Before proceeding with this tutorial we need to download IIS Manager for Remote Administration and of course windows hosting account which allow remote IIS management. After installing IIS Manager for Remote Administration open IIS Manager by typing inetmgr in Run window. In connection pane of IIS manager click on Create New Connection button. There are three different options. Click on Connect to a Site…

It will open new dialog box for connecting to remote website. In that dialog box enter server name and website name (which can be obtained from hosting control panel or contact hosting provider).



Clicking on next will ask for credentials for connecting to website.



After providing credentials when you click next, you might get server certificate alert depends on connecting server certificate. If you get one then click on connect if you trust connecting server.



On successful connection, it will ask for connection name. Provide connection name and click on finish button.



On connection, you might get following dialog asking to install server feature. This is the list of server feature which is not available on your local machine. If you want to manage / configure that feature through remote IIS then you must install it on your local machine.



After that you can see list of IIS feature available. Now you can configure it.



Done. Great job.

There are multiple instances when bloggers opt for third party hosted, external blogging systems such as Blogspot.com, LiveJournal, TypePad etc. for carrying out the blogging activity. This may be due to many reasons, more commonly due to lack of funds and limited knowledge about hosting. In this article, I will show you how to import a blogspot.com to wordpress. If you need wordpress hosting, please visit our site at http://www.hostforlife.eu.

1. Login to your administrator area

2. Go to toolsà Import

3. Choose the appropriate website from which you wish to Import the data.



4. Login to your Google Blogspot.com account.



5. Now you need to Authorize the transfer process, by granting access to WordPress. Hit the “Grant Access” tab to proceed further.



6. Incase you have multiple blogs within the Blogger account, all would be listed in the window. Select the “Import” option shown in front of the one you wish to migrate over to WordPress.



7. Now you need to map the author since there are different usernames in Blogger and WordPress.

HostForLIFE.eu was established to cater to an under served market in the hosting industry; web hosting for customers who want excellent service. HostForLIFE.eu – a cheap, constant uptime, excellent customer service, quality, and also reliable hosting provider in advanced Windows and ASP.NET technology. We proudly announces the availability of the Silverlight 5 hosting in our entire servers environment.

You can start hosting your ASP.NET MVC 3 site on our environment from as just low €3.00/month only. For more information about our new product, please visit our site at http://www.hostforlife.eu/Silverlight-5-European-Hosting.aspx.

“Today, we are really happy to announce the release of Silverlight 5 on our hosting environment. Silverlight 5 is part of a rich offering of technologies from Microsoft helping developers deliver applications for the web, desktop, and mobile devices. I personally would like to thank the people who have assisted in completing this project.” Said CEO of HostForLIFE.eu, Anthony Johnson.

“Silverlight 5 delivers great features that allow hardware H.264 decoding, adapting it better for video content. It also sports an improved graphics stack with 3D support, using the  XNA API.  This makes Silverlight 5 a more mature and capable platform for developing rich internet application.” Said John Curtis, VP Marketing and Business Development at HostForLIFE.eu. “We believe that our Silverlight 5 provide great opportunity to web developers.”

Silverlight 5 also includes the following developer related enhancements:

- XAML Debugging with breakpoints for binding debugging
- Implicit data templates for easy UI reuse
- Double (and multi) click support
- GPU-accelerated XNA-compatible 3D and immediate-mode 2D API
- Low-latency sound effects and WAV support
- Real operating system windows and multi-display support
- Significant performance improvements, fixes and much more

For complete information about this new product, please visit our official site at http://www.hostforlife.eu.

About us:

We are European Windows Hosting Provider which FOCUS in Windows Platform ONLY. We support Microsoft technology, such as the latest ASP.NET 4, ASP.NET MVC 3, SQL 2008/2008 R2, and much more.

Our number one goal is constant uptime. Our data center uses cutting edge technology, processes, and equipment. We have one of the best up time reputations in the industry.

Our second goal is providing excellent customer service. Our technical management structure is headed by professionals who have been in the industry since it's inception. We have customers from around the globe, spread across every continent. We serve the hosting needs of the business and professional, government and nonprofit, entertainment and personal use market segments

Today I will show you how to solve problem in send message when you host with hosting provider. This is the error message:

The SMTP server requires a secure connection or the client was not authenticated. The server response was: host5.vdconline.vn ESMTP MailEnable Service, Version: 5.51-- denied access at 02/03/12 02:45:26

Please try this solution below:

Public Shared Sub SendEmail(  


    Dim Message As New Net.Mail.MailMessage() 

    Dim FromEmail As New Net.Mail.MailAddress(“From Email Address”)
    Message.From = FromEmail
    Message.To.Add(“To Email Address”)  


    Message.Subject = “Subject of the Email”
    Message.Body = “Body of the Email”
    ‘Message.SubjectEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8
    ‘Message.BodyEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8
    ‘Message.IsBodyHtml = False
    ‘Message.Priority = Net.Mail.MailPriority.High 

    Dim SmtpClient As New Net.Mail.SmtpClient(“smtp.YourEmailServer.com”, PortNo eg: 587 for gmail )
    SmtpClient.EnableSsl = True
    ‘smtp.DeliveryMethod = Net.Mail.SmtpDeliveryMethod.Network
    ‘smtp.UseDefaultCredentials = False 

SmtpClient.Credentials = New Net.NetworkCredential(“YourEmailAddress”, “YourEmailPassword”) 

    SmtpClient.Send(Message)  


End Sub

Note: An important point to note is that you have to set the EnableSSl to True before you set the NetWork Credentials of your SMTP client.

This is the error message that sometimes you can find on IIS:

Server Error in ‘/’ Application.

Configuration Error

Description: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.

Parser Error Message: It is an error to use a section registered as allowDefinition=’MachineToApplication’ beyond application level.  This error can be caused by a virtual directory not being configured as an application in IIS.

I will gonna show you how to fix this issue. What is the issue?

1. When you create an new web application using visual studio.net, it automatically creates the virtual directory and configures it as an application. However, if you manually create the virtual directory and it is not configured as an application, then you will not be able to browse the application and may get the above error. The debug information you get as mentioned above, is applicable to this scenario.

To resolve it, Right Click on the virtual directory - select properties and then click on "Create" next to the "Application" Label and the textbox. It will automatically create the "application" using the virtual directory's name. Now the application can be accessed.

2. When you have sub-directories in your application, you can have web.config file for the sub-directory. However, there are certain properties which cannot be set in the web.config of the sub-directory such as authentication, session state (you may see that the error message shows the line number where the
authentication or sessionstate is declared in the web.config of the sub-directory). The reason is, these settings cannot be overridden at the sub-directory level unless the sub-directory is also configured as an application (as mentioned in the above point).

Mostly we have the practice of adding web.config in the sub-directory if we want to protect access to the sub-directory files (say, the directory is admin and we wish to protect the admin pages from unathorized users).

But actually, this can be achieved in the web.config at the application's root level itself, by specifing the location path tags and authorization, as follows:-

<location path="Admin">
<system.web>
<authorization>
<allow roles="administrators" />
<deny users="*" />
</authorization>
</system.web>
</location>

However, if you wish to have a web.config at the sub-directory level and protect the sub-directory, you can just specify the Authorization mode as follows:-

<configuration>
<system.web>
<authorization>
<allow roles="administrators" />
<deny users="*" />
</authorization>
</system.web>
</configuration>

Thus you can protect the sub-directory from unauthorized access.

If you wish to use the mailboxes for a specific domain name with an external mail server, you can easily do that by following these steps:

1. Go to Domains, click the Domain Name.
2. In the Web Site group click DNS Settings
3. Now in the record type column, locate MX record, and click the respective link in the Host column on the left.
4. Next, in the enter mail exchanger box, type the external mail server’s name and click OK.
5. Click Up Level to return to the Domain Management screen.
6. Now click Mail Accounts and Mail Settings.
7. Clear the Activate mail service on domain check box and click OK.

Your domain will now use an external mail server.

If you would like to block a website from being viewed on your Windows computer, follow these steps:

1. You need to run C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

2. Then, backup the hosts file.

3. Open hosts file there from the notepad.

4. At the end of the line you can see as per below.

127.0.0.1 localhost

5. Append the following line at the end

127.0.0.1 BlockSitename.com # replace the BlockSitename.com with the site name that you want to block.

6. Then go to Start->Run-> type ipconfig /flushdns

In this tutorial, I will show you how to use Traceroute on your Windows. Please go to Startà Runà Cmd. Then, you must type tracert, give a space then add your domain name. See this example below:



IP Whois – Also pronounced as Who is, this tool is more often used to know information about the IP address of a particular domain, its location and the details about the registrar and owner. It basically is a query and response protocol used extensively to lookup to databases holding information about registered users of an Internet resource.

Reverse DNS lookup – Also referred to as the rDNS, it is mandatory to have it on your server. It is used for determining the association of a domain name with a particular IP address using the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet.

SPAM DB Lookup – This tool enables server administrators to look for the possible accounts on server to be included in the spammers list. Spam DB lookup enables them to check if the server and its IP’s have been added to the list due to a possible spamming activity carried out by someone using the server.

DNS Lookup – DNS lookup is used to determine various DNS records such as A, MX records, CNAME etc. for a particular domain. Using this simple tool, one can check where a particular site is hosted.

Yesterday, we have just talked about how to connect FTP with Web Browser. In this tutorial, I will show you the error message that sometimes shown when we connect with Filezilla. This in a common error message that you will find on Filezilla:

Failed to retrieve directory listing.

Here is the image:



As the image shows, the connection enters Passive (PASV) Mode and after that, the error occurs. A solution that could work, is to disable passive mode. Here’s how you do that in FileZilla:

- Open Filezilla, go to Edit -> Settings
- Click on Connection -> FTP: Choose Active
- Click on Connection -> FTP -> Active Mode: Select "Ask your operating system for the external IP address”
- Click on Connection -> FTP -> Passive Mode: Choose Fall Back to Active Mode
- Press OK.



Hope it helps. Good luck