Reddybrek.com

GlobalTaxiNetworks.com has finally launched! Now any business can book a taxi, know how much it's going to cost in advance, save favourite journeys, re-book previous journey's, add via routes and even print off invoices all in the click of a button....ok it's a few clicks but it's still a slick system if I say so myself :D

Using the power of Google maps with help from jQuery, C# and Linq to SQL we're able to work out rates for your journey anywhere in Ireland. This system has been built with multiple markets in mind and we're hoping to help roll out the system for Tiománaí Services Ltd (the site system owners) into the UK, western Europe and further over the next 12months.

Initially when I started building the system I wasn't sure if it could be done but from trial and error - and countless late nights! - the site is finally up and running. I have to say that it's been one of the best projects I've worked on while at Dragnet Systems. It's also one of the first systems powered by our newest admin tool technology. The owners of this new system can look after any aspect of this complex system with ease. Everything from approving users who sign up, setting pricing and saving locations on Google maps can all be easily added/updated/deleted in a matter of seconds. As with everything we develop we have ensures that the admin tools get as much love as the front end of the website itself.

I'm really excited by the possibilities this site brings to the market and I'd like to wish everyone in Tiománaí Services Ltd all the best with the site going forward!

Dragnet Systems has launched its newest online store for Hennessy Cycles in Fermoy, Cork - http://www.hennessycycles.com. This new store is designed to help Hennessy Cycles race ahead of their competition and offer their customers something a bit different from the usual online bike stores.

Hennessy Cycles will deliver throughout Ireland and UK. Irish deliveries are free. UK orders over €50 will also get free delivery which is fantastic.

It's great to see such a fresh take on the design for our stores, which to date have typically had white backgrounds. I think the darker design really works with the images used on the site. Unfortunately I didn't have any input into this project as it was handled by others in our team but I thought the finished product turned out so well I had to blog about it. Go Team Dragnet! *ahem*

Since I've been running Firebug 1.5.x I've noticed these weird error messages from a javascript file called nslivemarkservice.js. I did a bit of digging around and it looks like this is a leak is happening for some other people as well.

The solution to this issue is quite simple and requires you to download the latest (not fully released) version of Firebug. I'm sure once version 1.6 is given an official release this will fix the issue for all users but for those of us who would like to debug our code now without seeing these annoying error messages you can download an alpha version of 1.6 of Firebug over at the Firebug website - http://getfirebug.com/downloads

Dragnet Systems has launched a new website for Estuary Wholesale Suppliers who are an electrical equipment supplier based in Limerick, Ireland.

The site itself is a very simple design with the focus very much on getting the information across in an easy, uncluttered way. The site was built by our designer Raul and the tech was handled by Sinead. I think they both did a fantastic job getting this site out the door considering that they have other projects on the go as well.

My next project should be launching around April 20th if everything goes to plan. It's a brand new concept for booking a taxi for businesses and I can't wait until the site goes live when I can talk more about it.

It's been a long time coming but today is the day that Dragnet Systems finally launches its newest micro site for Hertz Europe: Hertz4Ryanair.com. As you can tell from the screenshot above this new site was designed very much with Ryanair and Hertz in mind. The style and approach to the design also follows on from our Hertz Aerlingus project we released 6 months ago - HertzFlyDrive.com. There is a nice clean interface for selecting your cars and accessories that we think really add to the overall user experience. It is also a much faster booking process for booking your car compared to the micro site that this replaces.

The site contains a brand new offer system that allows Hertz to easily manage the offers to be displayed on the site. This offer system enables different layouts to be selected for offers, built in preview functionality and also scheduling.

The new site also display more information on the car you are looking to rent including CO2 emissions, the number of suitcases that will fit in the car and any extras that come with the car like heated seats, passenger airbags, etc.

It will be exciting to see how the public take to the new site over the next few weeks. We're hoping that this site will be a big success for both Hertz and Ryanair going forward.

You can view the new site over at Hertz4Ryanair.com. Let me know what you think.

It's a new year and thankfully the work inside in Dragnet Systems shows no signs of slowing down. VGWines.com is a brand new online store for an existing wine retailer based in Kerry, Vanilla Grape Wines Ltd.

The store uses Dragnet Systems own online store software. We have rebuilt the front end engine to make it easier for our in-house designers to build templates for any new stores going forward. It will also help increase the speed at which we can build new stores for clients now which is fantastic news.

It was interesting to note that due to legal issues with selling alcohol online VGWines.com can only sell to Irish consumers. This is the first time one of our stores has been faced with such a restriction but it makes sense. As always Rebecca has done a fantastic job with the design of the site and it definitely has a perfect 'wine' mood about it. I'm getting thirsty just looking at it :)

Yesterday I wrote a post about how to achive a redirect for domain.com to www.domain.com using IIS 6. Today I will show you how easy it is to set this up for IIS 7 on Win Server 2008.

You should be aware that this install requires a reboot. Only install on your server if you are in a position to restart your server.

First thing you need to do is download the rewrite module for IIS 7 from Microsoft. The 32bit version is here and the 64bit version here.

Before you can install this module you need to stop some services running on your server. Open the command prompt (Start -> Run -> type cmd and press enter) and type: net stop was /y

Now double click on the file you just downloaded and install the product. It can take a few mins and look like it's after hanging but give it a moment and it will install for you. You will be prompted to restart your server. Do this now as without a restart IIS will give you a 503 HTTP error when attempting to display a webpage.

Once the server has restarted open IIS Manager and make sure that both your domain and relevant application pool have been restarted.

Open up your browser and test your site just to double check everything is ok after the install. You should find that everything is working as normal.

You can now put the following rule in your web.config file within the <system.webServer> tag:

Save and FTP the web.config file to your server. If you type in yourdomain.com (without www.) you should notice that it redirects you to www.yourdomain.com now.

For more information about rerouting your traffic you can visit the IIS site for more details. A great place to start is on the Rule with Rewrite Map page.

If you have a SSL on your site chances are that you only want your visitors to go through your site on one particular domain. Let's say you own domain.com and you always want your visitors to go to www.domain.com when using your site. IIS 7 has a really cool rewrite module that you can use but IIS 6 users need to jump through some hoops to get this function working.

For this article I will assume that you have www.domain.com already setup on your server in IIS 6 and that you have setup your SSL to work on this domain. I will also assume that you have setup the host name for your domain to be www.domain.com, your IP address and domain.com.

Your first step is to remove domain.com from the allowed host list for this domain in IIS. To do this just right click on domain.com in IIS and select Properties. Next to the IP address of your domain click the Advanced button. Highlight the host header that has domain.com (no www.) and click remove. Click OK and apply to save and continue.

At this point you might want to rename domain.com in IIS to say domain.com (WWW) to make it clear that this setup of domain.com is for www.domain.com.

Next up add a new domain to IIS. You should name this as domain.com (no WWW) in IIS, again this is only to make it clear when you're looking through your list of domains that this setup is for domain.com without the www. subdomain. Set this up exactly the same as you did for www.domain.com but put domain.com as the host name. Once you have added domain.com to IIS go to its properties and select the Home Directory tab.

1. Select Redirect to another domain (1).
2. Remove the application name (2).
3. Enter in the domain we want to redirect to. In this case it's www.domain.com and add on $S$Q at the end of the domain so that you are specifying to IIS to redirect to the correct folder structure on www.domain.com and to pass through the correct query string values as entered by the user (3).
4. Tick the checkboxes for The exact URL entered above and Permanent Redirect (4,5).
5. Click Apply and then OK (6,7).

If you now open your browser and type in domain.com it should automatically redirect you to www.domain.com! If you test with query string values you should see that these also carry through to www.domain.com.

Although this option is not an ideal setup as it duplicates your IIS domain list it will work for you. If anyone knows a better way to achieve the same results in IIS 6 let me know.

It might be the first day of December but that hasn't stop us from launching 2 new websites to get our December releases off to a great start! Aquatech Ireland have launched 2 new online stores and a brochure site to open up their products to customers all around the world. Aquatech.ie are one of Irelands leading suppliers of renewable energy systems and alternative heating solutions. With renewable energy on everyone's lips at the moment I'm sure they will do very well for themselves. TheHeatingWarehouse.co.uk is a sister site of aquatech specifically targeting the UK market. This site isn't live just yet but should be launched in the next few days. The PolarBear.ie brochure site is a nice little springboard site to links to both of these new stores.

Over the coming weeks we have loads of new and exciting sites launching including a new online clothing store for Clintons, a new online wine store for Vanilla Grape Wines, the new redesigned City Gate Mahon and much more. My blog has suffered a bit due to two massive projects that I am currently working on. I'll have more details on this work closer to launch but I've been learning loads about Google Maps and highly scalable server setups as a result of these projects. Fun times :D

Dragnet Systems has just launched one of our newest online stores - thereallygoodsoapcompany.ie. This online store features a brand new fully featured Wholesaler section as well as all the existing functionality of our store software. This new section will let the website owners manage wholesalers, add specific wholesaler products and even control the pricing per wholesaler for shared products.

This site also contains a fully content managed news section and a fully integrated newsletter system. The site benefits from having some really nice, professionally done, product imaging. Some of these items look good enough to eat! Although I wouldn't recommend it ;)

I really like the design work our lead designer Rebecca managed to pull off on this site. It really is a gorgeous site to look at and go through. I'd like to wish all at The Really Good Soap Company the best going forward with their new store. As well as having a .ie domain site they have also registered thereallygoodsoapcompany.com to appeal to a wider market as they will ship worldwide. I'm sure they will have loads of orders over the next few weeks as the online Christmas shopping kicks off!