Add forms based authentication to IIS8

Roles and Features in Server Manager

Application Development Features have ASP.Net checked?

That is needed in order for Forms Authentication to be available.

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Web Services Extensions – Missing Menu iiS7

Be sure to install the ISAPI Extensions and CGI components from Turn Windows Features On and Off (or server manager role management if you are using Longhorn server).  Once they are installed, the Isapi + CGI Restrictions icon should appear in the admin tool.

Another great move by Micro$oft

Link Page or Post to URL in Wordpress

WordPress Plugin to Link Post and Page Titles To External URL

If you don’t want to play with the code to implement the functionality to link post titles to external url in WordPress, you can use this great plugin called Page Links To. This plugin adds a custom meta box to each of your WordPress posts and pages which lets you link it to any external URL.

Keep Website with Office 365

Keep your current website when you add your domain to Office 365

To add a custom domain, like fourthcoffee.com, to Office 365, you follow the steps in the domains setup wizard.

If you already have a website outside of Office 365 that uses the domain you’re adding, likehttp://www.fourthcoffee.com, select No, I have an existing website or prefer to manage my own DNS records. Then the wizard will guide you to set up your domain with your domain’s DNS records hosted at your current DNS host. If you don’t have a website, you can opt to have Office 365 set up and manage DNS for your domain instead.

Want to have Office 365 manage DNS for your domain anyway (not recommended)? You must redirect to your current website

This is not the recommended option if you already have a website outside Office 365 that uses your domain (unless you’ve set up an outside website using one of Office 365’s web hosting partners). We recommend that you continue to manage your domain’s DNS at your current DNS host to help prevent problems with access to your current website when you set up your domain with Office 365.

If you still want Office 365 to manage DNS for your domain, you may be able to set up redirection from Office 365 to your current website. If you don’t set up redirection using a static address for your website, people won’t be able to get to your website after you add your domain to Office 365 and change your domain’s nameservers to point to Office 365 nameservers.

Why is access to your website affected? Because nameserver settings tell web browsers, and other Internet services, where to look for your domain. After you change your domain’s nameservers to Office 365, so Office 365 can manage DNS for your domain, web browsers will look for your website at Office 365. Since your website is hosted by a different service, the site won’t be found.

Add your domain to Office 365 and set up redirection to your website

1. Before you begin, you will need a static IP address or FQDN for your current website. Contact your website hosting provider to get the IP address or FQDN. (Using a dynamic IP address, such as the address returned when you run a program like Ping, will not let you set up reliable redirection because the IP address can change at any time.)
2. Add your domain to Office 365, following the steps in the domains setup wizard.

   In the wizard, choose the option that you do not have a website with your domain. Do not change your domain’s nameserver records in the setup wizard until you complete the following step.

3. Follow these steps to create an A record to redirect traffic to your website, using the static IP address (or FQDN) that you got from your current website hosting provider.
4. We recommend that you also create a CNAME record to help make sure that your customers will find your website whether or not they include www together with your domain name. Follow these steps to add the CNAME record in Office 365 in Office 365.

   If the option to create an A record or CNAME record is not available, see Can’t update the A record or CNAME record?.

5. Complete the final step of the domains setup wizard, to change your nameserver records to point to the Office 365 nameservers.

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Now that you’ve got email accounts and website redirection set up, you can update your domain nameserver (NS) records for the domain to point to Office 365. By setting up email addresses and the A record first, as described above, you and other people in your organization will have email accounts that use the domain address, and your website will still be available at your current website hosting provider after you change the NS records.

NOTE    When you change your domain’s NS records as described here, you change the destination of domain services, such as email, to point to Office 365. Remember—if you’re already using the domain for email outside Office 365, make sure that you’ve created Office 365 email addresses with the domain for your users (likeben@contoso.com) so that they won’t lose email messages when you update the NS records to point to Office 365.

Complete the setup wizard: Change your nameserver records

1. Sign in to Office 365 with your work or school account.
2. Go to the Manage domains page.
3. On the Manage Domains page, for the domain that you’re setting up, choose Complete setup.
4. Follow the steps to update your nameserver records to point to the Office 365 nameservers.

After you’ve updated your NS records, email will begin to be routed to Office 365, but traffic to the website address that uses the domain will continue to go to your current hosting provider.

Image Macbook Air’s – Deploystudio

Install DeployStudio Server on  Macbook Air and run DeployStudio Assistant to create a new .nbi file

Once this is complete copy that to Library/NetBoot/NetBookSP0/ on the server that is used as the DeployStudio Server.

You will now be able to boot holding the option key and deploy out the image using either thuderbolt to ethernet or WIFI

Rename whole domain – Server 2008

Server 2008 Domain Rename

 Original Post at TechScrawl.com

Daniel Petri recently had a good article on his site describing the steps for renaming a Windows Server 2008 domain controller. Here I’m going to describe a related but different task, renaming the actual domain. Renaming a domain is something you don’t want to find yourself having to do very often, or ever, in a production environment. However I have found the need to do it several times in a test setup; the process is similar to renaming a Server 2003 domain and isn’t as difficult as one might think.

Microsoft has pages and pages of documentation covering the ins and outs of domain renaming, and I recommend using those (see link at end of this post), especially when attempting this on a production domain. However the steps below will give a good overview and should be sufficient for testing purposes. First, the major prerequisites for a domain rename in a simple single domain forest:

• Enterprise Administrator credentials are required.

• The domain should be well formed and healthy.

• The forest functional level must be Windows Server 2003 or 2008, and all DC’s running at least Server 2003.

• A DNS zone for the new domain must be in place.

• The Rendom and Gpfixup tools must be copied to a domain member workstation to perform the rename operations. The operations should not be initiated from a domain controller.

• See the TechNet link below for details on requirements if you’re using DFS redirection, roaming profiles, running a CA, or Exchange Server.

The domain rename is performed using the Rendom tool, which is installed with Active Directory when running dcpromo. Once this process is started, you must ensure that no changes are made to the forest configuration until complete. The steps are as follows.

1. Run “rendom /list” to generate a state file named Domainlist.xml. This file contains the current forest configuration.
2. Edit the state file, changing the <DNSname> and <NetBiosName> fields to the desired values for the new domain name.
3. Run “rendom /showforest” to show the potential changes; this step does not actually make any changes.
4. Run “rendom /upload” to upload the rename instructions to the configuration directory partition on the domain controller holding the domain naming operations master role. The instructions are then replicated to all other DC’s in the forest. Once replicated to all DC’s, the rename instructions are ready to be carried out. You can force replication by running the “repadmin /syncall” command.
5. Run “rendom /prepare” to verify the readiness of each domain controller in the forest to carry out the rename instructions. This should contact all DC’s successfully and return no errors before proceeding.
6. Run “rendom /execute”, this verifies readiness of all DC’s, then preforms the rename action on each one. There will be a service interruption during this period. Upon completion domain controllers will be rebooted. If an error occurs on a DC during this phase, the entire transaction is rolled back. Any DC’s that don’t complete successfully after this phase must be demoted and removed from service.
7. Run “gpfixup” to refresh all intradomain references and links to group policy objects.
8. Reboot client computers and member servers twice to obtain new domain name. Because the GUID’s of the domain remain the same during the rename process, domain membership is not affected. The DNS suffix of the client machines will also be updated assuming the default option of “Change primary DNS suffix when domain membership changes” is enabled.
9. Run “rendom /clean” to remove references of the old domain name from Active Directory.
10. Run “rendom /end” to unfreeze the forest configuration and allow further changes. This was frozen during the rendom /upload step.

Should you have any problems with clients recognizing the new domain name, you can remove them by running “netdom remove <machine-name> /Domain:<old-domain> /Force”, rebooting, then rejoining the new domain. Once the rename is complete, there is one final change required on domain controllers. The DNS suffix of a DC is not changed as part of this process. This must be changed manually or the DC’s will have a DNS suffix that differs from the AD domain name.

For further details on renaming Server 2008 domains, reference this TechNet article:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794869.aspx

LAN computers can’t access company website with the internal DNS – Resolution with screenshots

LAN computers can’t access company website with the internal DNS – Resolution with screenshots

Situation: Our client is running Windows 2008 R2 as DC/DNS. Every thing works except they can’t access their website located in a
hosting company. They get “The webpage cannot be found”. However, if they replace the internal DNS (192.168.1.3 that is also DC/DNS IP address) with
their ISP DNS, they can access the website. All inside computers with the internal DNS have this problem. They don’t have the problem to access other
websites.

Troubleshooting:.

1. nslookup can resolve the website.

2. No proxy, firewall and content filter to block the website.

3. We found the client created an DNS for the external domain as shown below. The fix is deleting the external domain. We do believe adding www.domain.org in the external DNS will fix the problem too.