Blog
Paul Seal's personal blog
Blog posts
This is a simple and straight forward tutorial on how to set up and configure error logging with log4net in your .NET application.
dotnet Searching for prime numbersSearching for prime numbers can be fun. This post shows you how I did it.
dotnet How to create a custom Slack integration using webhooksThis post gives you the code and simple instructions on how to create your own custom integration for slack, written in .NET C#
dev·dotnet Why you should not write comments in your code.Over the years, I have heard both sides of the argument about whether you should or shouldn't write comments in your code. In this post, I make my argument as to why I think you should avoid writing comments in your code.
umbraco umbracoUrlAlias - Create an alternative URL for a page in UmbracoUsing the umbracoUrlAlias property on a page in Umbraco gives you the ability to set up one or more different URLs for a single page. The page structure of your site might create long URLs, and you may want to a shorter one, the umbracoUrlAlias will do that for you. Or a page may have previously existed with a different URL, and you want to catch the traffic going to that URL and get them to look at this page, the umbracoUrlAlias will do that for you as well.
umbraco How to install Umbraco using Visual Studio NuGet IIS and SQL ServerThis post gives you a step by step guide on how to install Umbraco on your local machine using Visual Studio, NuGet, IIS and SQL Server.
umbraco Intercepting content and member save events in UmbracoIn Umbraco, you may want to perform certain actions when a content item or member is being saved or created. This post shows you how to do that. This is relevant for Umbraco projects that use MVC.
dotnet How to use bundling to minify css and JavaScript in MVC and UmbracoThis post shows you how to set up and use bundling and minification in your MVC website. There are specific instructions on how set it up for Umbraco websites too.
dotnet How do you use the try catch finally blocks?I must admit, in the past when I just want some code to run, but it's not critical if it fails, I have written a try catch block which looks like this.
dotnet Please tell me you don't write if true equals trueIt drives me crazy when I see code where someone is checking a boolean to see if it is true or not and they write it like this.
dotnet MVC Custom Model Property Validation AttributesThis post shows you how to create your own custom validation attributes in MVC. You can then decorate your model properties with them on your forms.
umbraco Simple Umbraco search exampleThis post shows you how easy it is to use the default Umbraco search functionality in your site. It uses a basic form and then uses razor to display your search results.