Pretty WordPress Permalinks on Azure

So I’m in the process of moving my company website to Azure and I’ve decided to create it using WordPress as I’ve enjoyed the experience of WordPress so far with this blog.

This blog is hosted for free by my good awesome friend Brandon (www.ganch.com) and so I haven’t asked any questions as to what platform it’s hosted on.  I’d assumed it’d be an IIS server but, as they say, if you assume something (insert terrible pun here).  So imagine my surprise when I popped down to the Permalinks section of my Azure hosted WordPress site and saw that my page links (note it’s page links only I’m referring to here folks, the blog posts were fine) could only be almost pretty.  Almost pretty?  WTF?  That won’t do because this site is presently the most important site in the world to me and I demand that it’s links be of the friendly variety. Continue reading

Aliases in SQL Server 2008

As far as I’m concerned remembering server names is a pain in the backside especially when you have no control over how they are named.  Is abc123.sql.domain.net the development environment, or is it the UAT environment, or is it production?

The good news is that you can set up aliases in SQL Server 2008 to help you out and it literally only takes a couple of minutes to do. Continue reading

Remove Recent Server List in SQL Server 2008

Having recently gone through the process of moving a number of databases to new servers I was met with the annoying issue of having my list of recent servers in SQL Server 2008 being cluttered with servers that were no longer active.  Although you can’t clear this list directly through the SQL Server GUI (apparently this is possible in SQL Server 2012) it is straight forward enough to get rid of your unwanted servers.

Before you start though, make sure all instances of SQL Server are closed. Continue reading