Refitter and a BFF: Reducing the Cost of API Integration
10 minute read
A business-focused guide to reducing API integration effort and defects with generated Refit clients and an owned Backend for Frontend boundary.
Insights and guidance
Software development articles
Practical articles covering modern .NET development, Azure, software architecture, AI-enabled applications and business software.
Designing Multi-Tenant SaaS Applications in .NET
8 minute read
A production guide to SaaS tenant isolation covering shared or separate databases, identity, EF Core, caches, workers and noisy neighbours.
How to Choose Between Blazor Server, Blazor WebAssembly and Razor Pages
14 minute read
An expert comparison of Razor Pages and Blazor render modes, covering circuits, startup, offline synchronisation, security, scaling and mixed architectures.
A Practical Software Architecture Review Checklist
9 minute read
How to review software architecture through evidence, trade-offs, failure paths and operational reality.
Observability for .NET Applications with Application Insights
8 minute read
A production guide to .NET observability covering Application Insights, OpenTelemetry, traces, metrics, sampling, privacy, alerts and cost.
Handling File Downloads Correctly with Refit and ASP.NET Core
7 minute read
A production guide to streaming file downloads through ASP.NET Core and Refit without buffering, leaking resources or trusting unsafe metadata.
Build or Buy? Choosing the Right Business Software Strategy
8 minute read
Choose build, buy or hybrid business software capability by capability using real workflows, total cost and practical ownership.
A Practical Guide to Validation in ASP.NET Core APIs
10 minute read
A production guide to ASP.NET Core API validation, from DTO and FluentValidation boundaries to domain rules, race conditions and Problem Details.
Behind the Architecture of a Cloud-Based Website Spell Checker
9 minute read
The production architecture behind crawling websites safely, analysing language reliably and reporting meaningful changes over time.
Prompt Injection: What Business Software Teams Need to Know
8 minute read
A production threat model for direct and indirect prompt injection, covering retrieval, tools, data exfiltration, memory, detection and incident response.
What Good Software Discovery Looks Like Before Development Starts
8 minute read
Learn how good discovery turns workflows, data, integrations, risks and options into evidence for a bounded first investment.
Securing Secrets in .NET with Azure Key Vault
8 minute read
A production guide to Key Vault identity, permissions, secret retrieval, rotation, private networking, redaction and operational recovery.
From Bespoke Development to Cloud SaaS: The C3 Software Journey
8 minute read
C3 Software's journey into cloud SaaS and the engineering responsibilities that continuous product ownership adds.
Refit and OpenAPI: Generating Reliable .NET API Clients
8 minute read
A production guide to Refit and OpenAPI clients, covering source-of-truth decisions, generation, resilience, streaming, errors and compatibility.
The Hidden Cost of Maintaining Legacy Software
11 minute read
Learn how to expose the real cost of legacy software and choose whether to stabilise, modernise, replace or retire it.
Building WCAG 2.2 AA Compliant Web Applications
9 minute read
A production accessibility guide covering WCAG 2.2 AA, semantic HTML, keyboard and focus behaviour, errors, zoom and assistive technology testing.
MongoDB or SQL Server for a New .NET Application?
8 minute read
A production comparison of MongoDB and SQL Server covering documents, relations, transactions, schema change, indexes, recovery and hybrid persistence.
Forwarded Headers in ASP.NET Core Behind a Reverse Proxy
7 minute read
A production guide to forwarded headers, proxy trust, client IP chains, HTTPS redirects, canonical hosts and diagnosing multi-hop deployments.
A Practical Guide to Incremental Software Modernisation
12 minute read
Learn how to modernise legacy software incrementally without creating permanent coexistence, duplicated data ownership or a second technology estate.
Migrating an ASP.NET MVC Application to Modern .NET
12 minute read
Migrate ASP.NET MVC to modern .NET without losing business behaviour or turning compatibility bridges into permanent architecture.
How Much Does Bespoke Software Cost in the UK?
8 minute read
Learn what drives bespoke software cost in the UK and how to turn uncertainty into a credible, comparable budget range.
REST API Design in ASP.NET Core: A Practical Checklist
13 minute read
A production REST API checklist covering resource design, retries, idempotency, ETags, pagination, Problem Details, rate limits and compatibility.
What Makes a Successful Business Software Project?
8 minute read
A practical account of the ownership, discovery, delivery, quality and operational decisions that turn a software project into a useful service.
What 25 Years of Building Business Software Has Taught Us
8 minute read
Durable engineering lessons from more than 25 years of building client systems and owning software products.
How to Add AI Features to Existing Business Software Safely
11 minute read
Learn how to add AI to existing business software without weakening authorisation, privacy, reliability or operational control.
Azure App Service vs Azure Functions: Which Should You Use?
9 minute read
A production comparison of App Service and Azure Functions covering Flex Consumption, scaling, cold starts, durability and hybrid hosting.
Dependency Injection in .NET: Practical Patterns and Common Mistakes
8 minute read
A production guide to .NET dependency injection lifetimes, captive dependencies, factories, options, HttpClient, DbContext and service location.
When Has Your Business Outgrown Spreadsheets?
11 minute read
Learn when a spreadsheet has become an uncontrolled operational system-and which proportionate replacement option to choose.
How to Structure a Maintainable ASP.NET Core Application
9 minute read
A pragmatic guide to ASP.NET Core solution structure, feature organisation, application and domain boundaries, infrastructure and testing.
Authentication and Authorisation in Modern ASP.NET Core
13 minute read
A practical guide to OAuth, OpenID Connect, permissions, policy design, multi-tenant claims, token revocation and choosing cookies or JWTs.
Azure Front Door for ASP.NET Core: A Practical Production Guide
8 minute read
A production guide to Azure Front Door Standard and Premium covering origin security, host headers, probes, caching and regional routing.
Designing Software for Maintainability, Not Just Launch Day
8 minute read
A production guide to maintainability covering modular ownership, abstractions, data evolution, operations, documentation, tests and technical debt.
Azure Service Bus Patterns for Reliable Business Workflows
8 minute read
A production guide to Service Bus queues, topics and sessions covering settlement, duplicate delivery, ordering, retries and dead-letter replay.
How to Modernise Software Without Replacing Everything at Once
10 minute read
Modernise business software without a big-bang replacement by targeting costly constraints and retiring legacy components incrementally.
Date, Time and Time Zones in .NET Without the Usual Bugs
7 minute read
A production guide to .NET temporal modelling, covering UTC, DateTimeOffset, local dates, time zones, DST ambiguity, recurrence and testing.
Evaluating AI Output Quality in Production Software
12 minute read
Learn how to turn AI evaluation into defensible release evidence using representative tests, meaningful metrics and production feedback.
Designing Audit Trails for Business Applications
8 minute read
A production guide to business audit trails covering event semantics, identity, atomic writes, tamper resistance, PII, retention and search.
Designing Resilient .NET Integrations with External APIs
9 minute read
A production guide to external API resilience covering uncertainty, timeout budgets, retry safety, breakers, contracts, queues and reconciliation.
Calculating the Return on Investment of Bespoke Software
9 minute read
How to calculate bespoke software ROI without turning optimistic assumptions into a misleading percentage.
Error Handling in ASP.NET Core APIs That Clients Can Rely On
11 minute read
A production guide to ASP.NET Core API errors, covering Problem Details, exception boundaries, retries, partial failure, stable codes and diagnostics.
Why We Build Products as Well as Client Software
8 minute read
How owning products strengthens C3 Software's approach to client systems, operations and long-term engineering.
Encrypting Sensitive Application Data in .NET
8 minute read
A production guide to .NET field encryption covering AES-GCM, envelope encryption, key rotation, search leakage, tenant context and restore.
Zero-Downtime Deployment Strategies for ASP.NET Core
9 minute read
A production guide to zero-downtime ASP.NET Core deployments covering rolling releases, slots, schema compatibility, messages and rollback.
Seven Signs Your Internal System Needs Replacing
10 minute read
Diagnose whether an internal system needs replacement using evidence from workflows, data, change, security, integration and business strategy.
Configuration and Feature Flags in ASP.NET Core
7 minute read
A production guide to ASP.NET Core options, provider precedence, secret rotation, feature rollouts, tenant targeting, kill switches and flag debt.
Controlling the Cost of AI Features in SaaS Products
11 minute read
Learn how to control AI costs per completed workflow without sacrificing quality, tenant isolation or product reliability.
API Versioning Without Breaking Your Customers
11 minute read
A production guide to API compatibility, version selection, enum and validation traps, contract testing, deprecation, sunset and customer migration.
Using Azure Blob Storage Securely from .NET
9 minute read
A production guide to Blob Storage identity, SAS delegation, upload quarantine, private networking, encryption, downloads and retention.
Why Software Discovery Saves Money Before Development Starts
8 minute read
Understand the economics of discovery: cheaper learning, better estimates, reduced rework and the value of an informed stop decision.
Caching in ASP.NET Core: What to Cache and What Not to Cache
7 minute read
A production caching guide covering staleness, tenant isolation, memory and distributed caches, output caching, invalidation races and stampedes.
What Building WAIVERFORM Taught Us About Secure Data Capture
8 minute read
Why trustworthy data capture depends on the complete evidence lifecycle, not merely a signature image and encryption.
Unit Tests, Integration Tests and End-to-End Tests in .NET
6 minute read
A production guide to .NET testing boundaries, mocks, real databases, containers, browser tests, test data, contract tests and CI execution.
Designing Reliable Webhooks in ASP.NET Core
8 minute read
A production webhook guide covering HMAC signatures, durable acceptance, retries, duplicate delivery, ordering, SSRF and operational replay.
Background Processing in .NET: Queues, Workers and Scheduled Jobs
7 minute read
A production guide to .NET workers, queues and scheduled jobs covering acknowledgement, duplicates, retries, dead letters, ordering and concurrency.
How to Choose a Software Development Partner
8 minute read
Choose a software development partner using inspectable delivery evidence, practical ownership and behaviour beyond the sales process.
Using AI for Document Processing Without Losing Human Oversight
11 minute read
Learn how to automate document processing while preserving source evidence, human responsibility and safe exception handling.
Why your website has spelling errors if you've checked it yourself
25 May 2022
The latest blog from Websitespellchecker.com looks at reasons why you website is likely to still have spelling errors if you have written and checked the content yourself.
Remember you can get a free courtesy assessment to see how your website fares.
Why poor spelling on your website could cost you sales
25 May 2022
Are you losing sales due to your website? Poor spelling can loose you your customers trust and in turn cost you sales, here’s the full blog from websitespellchecker.com to explain more
Free vs Paid Website Spellchecking Tools
25 May 2022
A short article on the difference in free vs paid spellcheckers for websites from websitespellchecker.com
Website SpellChecker Review on TrustPilot
10 August 2021
So chuffed that websitespellchecker.com has now gone international!
Check out Websitespellchecker.com Trustpilot reviews, we love seeing how a product we have developed is working for businesses to help keep them at the top of their game.
We now support American, Australian and Canadian English in addition to British English, as well as over two hundred other languages.
Five Reasons Why You Need to Spell Correctly On Your Website
27 May 2021
Thinking about how well your website performs? Have a little read about why correct spelling is important, including customer perception and SEO!
Data Privacy Day
28 January 2021
As a business respecting consumers privacy is a great way to inspire trust from current and potential future clients, it can only lead to enhance your reputation as a company and help grow your business.Data privacy laws vary from country to country so you must comply with whichever are relevant to you, but there are a few things to think about within your business wherever you are based.
- Try conducting an appraisal of your data collection practices.
Ensure you are aware which privacy laws and regulations apply to your business and your employees are aware of these, and of theirs and the companies obligations to protect personal information. You can get some great resources from companies such as MediaPro and the National Cyber Security Alliance to help educate staff. - Be transparent
As a company adopt a policy of being honest and open about how you collect customer data, how you use it and share it. Is it likely to be in keeping with what they will expect from your company, is the level of data you collect representative of the services you provide and the value that the customer gets back from giving you their data? Communicate concisely and clearly what your company does to protect and maintain privacy around their information. Let them know what privacy means to your company! - If you collect personal data you must protect it!
Aside from the financial loss of a data breach, it can lead to a loss in trust in your business. Again ensure the personal data you are collecting is collected for relevant reasons and you have security measures in place that are reasonable to the level of data you collect.
Lastly don’t forget that you are also responsible for how other companies and individuals collect and process personal data on your behalf!
Remote Working - Protecting your personal data and your companies
29 January 2021
Today’s post looks at security a little more and how to utilise it to help keep both your data and data stored by your company safe.
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Access to devices you use for work should be limited only to you, especially when the device is provided by the company
This can be tricky, especially for small businesses/freelancers and in the current environment of home-schooling, but wherever possible and especially if the device is provided by your company, don’t let other family members have access to it. -
Use a Virtual Private Network to access work accounts
Keep the software on your home router updated and secured with unique and substantial passwords/phrases. Don’t connect to work accounts through public WIFI unless using a VPN. -
Separate your networks
Have work and personal devices on separate WIFI networks. -
Keep software updated
before you connect to your workplace network ensure the devices you are connecting with are running on the most up to date version as updates will often increase security of applications and devices - Set auto log outs in case you walk away from your device and forget to do it.
- Use multifactor authentication whenever possible in addition to unique passwords for each individual account; remember you can use a password manager (subject to company approval) to store these passwords encrypted.
Your personal information is valuable to businesses
27 January 2021
Your personal information is valuable to businesses, your purchase history, IP address and location info all help them build up a picture of you and your habits. This year the National Cyber Security Alliance is encouraging people to ‘own their privacy’ and here are a few ways in which you can do that by helping protect your own data and limit the amount of data you share.
- Weigh the benefits you receive from a company against the amount of data they are asking for to help you make an informed decision.
- Be mindful about what apps you use and what permissions you give them, think about who gets that information.
- Do a quick check on which apps you have installed, remove any you no longer use and when setting new ones up think about whether they really need your geographic location, access to photo albums and contacts.
- Check in on your privacy settings on the web services you use, making sure they are set to a level of sharing information that you are happy with.
- Share with care- think about what you are posting online and who can see that information. What does the post reveal- locations, pets owned and their names, dates of birth, the first school you went to? These are often things used in passwords and security questions!
For extra security around data, help keep your apps secure by performing updates and consider using an encrypted password saver such as LastPass.
Celebrate Data Privacy Day on Thursday the 28th
26 January 2021
This is such an important topic for everyone who uses any technology and lets face that is pretty much everyone!
As individuals we have a level of responsibility for what data we give out and to who, and as businesses we have a responsibility for looking after our consumer and personnel data that we have access to, this feels especially relevant with the number of people now working from home!
Across the week we will be sharing some information and hints and tips on how to keep your personal data safe and how as businesses it is so important to protect peoples data and gain trust from consumers.
C3 Software is a Fasthosts Technology Partner!
8 December 2020
Signing up to Fasthosts products through us, such as webhosting, cloud backup and servers, means not only will you get a one off £30 credit but you will also get 5% off on your services for life!
Furthermore, signing up through our partnership scheme allows us to manage your hosting and products for you – taking the stress out of managing your technical services.
To sign up via our partnership and receive your discounts, click here. Terms & conditions are available via the link.