Our Insights

16 November 2016

With years of developing web applications, one thing that comes up time and time again is... What is the safest way to store passwords in a system? There are number of simple ways to store passwords Clear text Encrypted Hashing Password-based key derivation functions Clear Text If someone enters their password as "dog1" then the password will be stored in the database as "dog1". Storing the password in this format means anyone with access to the...

28 January 2016

Developing a great online community site is a painstaking process involving a wide range of different skills, including good communication, a thorough understanding of the community’s environment and culture and a lot of patience. For many agencies, a great website is all about what looks good on the page and how the imagery, fonts and colours work together. Whilst we also think this is important, unfortunately it’s not what creates an enjoyable or smooth experience for your...

23 January 2017

In moving to ASP.NET Core, one of the things which puzzled us was making sense of the Identity features for roles and claims. We kept finding ourselves asking "what's the difference anyway - aren't they both just things which you give to a user to show their permissions?". Before we could decide whether these features added value to the membership systems that we build for our clients, we had to decide what Microsoft intended us to do with them in the first place. It...

20 February 2017

Maybe I’m only speaking for myself here, but I think the most exciting thing about working in this industry is the way in which it constantly changes. Here at LightMedia we are always discussing the latest trends, features and products so that we can improve our offering to our clients, and I’m here to briefly introduce our latest big shift:ASP.NET Core, and with it the beginning of a migration to MVC. There are some great things about ASP.NET Core MVC that I can’t get...