What A Difference A New Site Makes
This week I have updated the POCO C++ Libraries website. The site now has a completely new design that looks modern, friendly and is easy to use. To give credit where credit is due, the design was in part influenced by the design of the Ruby On Rails website. We now also have much better documentation with the addition of 23 slide decks that provide overviews, tutorials and guidance when using the libraries.
The new website has now been online for three full days, and the Google Analytics statistics look promising. The bounce rate is now down to 30 %, from 50 % previously. Pageviews are up 60 %. And we’ve got new mailing list subscribers every day.
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Reverse HTTP
In the recent days and weeks I thought about a way to use HTTP as a device management protocol, to access devices sitting behind NAT routers or firewall. The idea is, basically, to access a device’s web interface, even if the device is behind a firewall, and thus not reachable by HTTP. The basic idea I had was that the device would initiate a (secure) socket connection to a central device management server. This is usually not a problem for devices sitting behind a NAT router or firewall. That connection would then be used for HTTP – but in the reverse direction. That means, the server would use the connection established by the device to send HTTP requests to the device. There would also be a simple reflector service on the server, which would forward incoming HTTP requests for a device’s web interface to the device, over the reverse HTTP connection. So far so good. Now, I did some Googling today, and found that others have had similar ideas. There’s even an internet draft for Reverse HTTP that was submitted in March 2009. Great – this might some day even become a standard practice.
