Out of the box, Umbraco is a well built and pretty fast content management system. However, it is still important you perform some steps to further optimize Umbraco’s performance and loading speed. Here on Sysadmins of the North, I wrote about “11+ tips to optimize Umbraco CMS” earlier, and in this post I write about implementing them. On a just installed and running website.

3 Ways of blocking sendmail.php on IIS webserver
Here are 3 ways of blocking access to a PHP sendmail.php script on your Windows Server IIS webserver. This comes in handy if a websites on your webserver sends out spam and you need to block access to a script on a specific website or globally in IIS. You can use a web.config file for this purpose, and here is how.

How to extend TinyMCE in Piranha CMS?
How to extend TinyMCE 5 editor in Piranha .NET CMS and add extra plugins to your project using Visual Studio 2022.

How to add a trailing slash in Umbraco 8
This article shows you how to add a trailing slash to URL’s in Umbraco 8, using IIS URL Rewrite Module, without breaking the Umbraco backend. Forcing one particular URL avoids duplicate content, which is important for SEO.

Adding VirtIO drivers to Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE)
If you need to add VirtIO drivers to your Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) to recover your Windows virtual machine, here is how. The following steps come in handy if you found out the hard way you don’t see any disks in Windows RE after a hard crash. Learn to customize your Windows System Restore and rescue Windows like a pro!

Retrieve SSH public key from Active Directory for SSH authentication
How to configure SSH public key authentication for Windows Server in Active Directory (AD)? In this article I’ll explain how to store and retrieve your SSH public keys from Windows Server Active Directory.

Install SQL Server cumulative updates silently
Installing SQL Server cumulative updates is always a cumbersome, and quite daunting task. Unpacking and running the CU installer is a slow process, you have to click through a lot of screens, and it’s hard to get it to install silently. But here is how!
Remove computer object from Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) in PowerShell
Here is a short PowerShell snippet for you to remove a computer object from Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).
How to add, list and remove IP addresses in Windows Firewall
Here is how to bulk add IP addresses in the Windows Firewall, list an IP address and remove all IP addresses from Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security. In Windows 11, 10 and Windows Server

Block brute force attacks on SQL Server, block IP addresses in Windows Firewall using PowerShell
This PowerShell solution blocks IP addresses that are trying to brute force your SQL Server logins, by blocking IP addresses in Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security, using PowerShell. You can use this to create your own solution to block offending IP addresses in SQL Server’s firewall.
Windows Defender: Turn off routine remediation
Here is how to (temporarily) turn off routine remediation in Windows Defender Antivirus (WinDefend). During the transition of antivirus software to Windows Defender Antivirus (WinDefend), I don’t want Windows Defender remediation on threats it might find. Later, when I have more information about potential threats, I can always choose to remediate that threat, e.g. quarantaine or remove it.
How to enable HTTP/3 in Windows Server 2022
With the release of Windows Server 2022, there is now native support for hosting HTTP/3 services. Here are the few steps you need to perform to enable HTTP/3 and MsQuic in Windows Server 2022 and IIS.

How to share OpenSSH keys with WSL in Windows 10
Don’t want to copy over your ssh keys from Windows to WSL Linux? Or generate new ones? Then share your Windows OpenSSH key with WSL! The OpenSSH config gives you the option to share keys using an IdentityFile directive. Here is how you can share your keys between Windows 10 and WSL.
Increase WMI memory to support large volume of queries
WMI stopped working: WmiPrvse.exe would just crash after hitting some memory limit of 512 MB. If you run into the same issue with Windows Management Instrumentation, here is how you can increase WMI Provider Service’s memory quota. Doing so resolved my issues. Here is how to optimize WMI.
How-to fix “Get-MpComputerStatus : The extrinsic Method could not be executed.”
This is how I resolved the error message “Get-MpComputerStatus : The extrinsic Method could not be executed.”, in my specific situation. In my situation, I had Windows Defender Antivirus disabled per GPO (“Turn off Windows Defender Antivirus” in Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows Defender Antivirus). And I wanted to enable Windows Defender in a new GPO, on a specific set of computers.