We understand that if you or your development team members are located far from our data centers, there could be some latency with your use of our TFS hosting services which can affect your team’s productivity.
To help our customers in this scenario we are announcing a FREE beta program for a new TFS Proxy service which should help speed things up for you and your development teams.
Team Foundation Server 2010 Proxy is a caching proxy server that can help improve your development team’s productivity by saving local copies of the source control files on servers that are closer to your team members. So your TFS account can be set up on our servers in Los Angeles or London, but a team member working in Australia, India or the Philippines will be able to connect to a server closer to their location and work on the same projects without the latency they might experience connecting to the U.S. or European servers.
With this beta program, we’ve launched TFS Proxy in three regions; North America, Europe and in Asia. For those TFS customers with team members located far from our data centers, please test out the TFS Proxy service for free and provide us with feedback.
To support the proxy service, we’ve introduced a new Proxy Manager section in the TFS control panel where you can enable and manage TFS Proxy.
Joe will be following up with a post with more information on this new Proxy service.
As businesses and organizations increasingly embrace social media to communicate and build relationships with their customers in this new era of transparency and engagement, we thought it would be interesting to explore how active our customers were in using social media sites.
A survey was conducted in March 2012 and we received 701 responses from our U.S. based customers. In the survey, we asked our clients to rate how active they were in using Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and to select from four options, including “Do Not Use,” “Set up account, but never use,” “Use occasionally,” and “Active User.”
For the purpose of this post we only show the percentage of the “Active Users” for each of the social media sites.
The chart below shows the number of active members among top social media, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook in the U.S. The data was compiled from the social media companies press releases and their “about us” pages. As Facebook is planning to go public this month, the company submitted paperwork to the SEC and reported to have reached 901 million active users on April 23, 2012 (1). LinkedIn reported 161 million professional users at the end of March 2012 (2). As Twitter turned six years old, the company announced having 140 million users at March 21, 2012 (3). To celebrate his first anniversary as the CEO of the world’s largest search engine, Larry Page wrote a post in early April 2012 and announced that Google+ had registered over 100 million users (4).
Observing the results of our customer survey, the top social media site actively used by DiscountASP.NET customers was Facebook. The survey showed that 43% of our clients are active users of Facebook. In the second spot was LinkedIn with 20% of our clients claiming to be active users. In the third place was Twitter with 16% of our clients being active users. And finally, in the last position was Google+ with 8% of our clients being active users.
Of course, Google+ is the newest social media site to launch (in 2011) and both Facebook and LinkedIn have been around a lot longer, so the fourth position for Google+ is expected. Facebook, by far is the most actively used social media site and Google+ has its work cut out to catch up. In future surveys, we can monitor how the usage of these social media sites and other emerging sites change over time among our clients.
Often times we receive questions from customers asking if registering a domain name for more than one year has any positive impact on a web site’s search engine rankings. Unfortunately it is often claimed that multi-year domain registrations improve domain authority, thus having a positive impact on a site’s search engine optimization. I would like to clarify that the number of years a domain is registered for has extremely minimal, if any, impact on SEO.
In an article titled “Google Says Domain Registrations Don’t Affect SEO, Or Do They?” Google’s very own Matt Cutts is quoted:
“To the best of my knowledge, no search engine has ever confirmed that they use length-of-registration as a factor in scoring. If a company is asserting that as a fact, that would be troubling”
Here is a short video where Matt gets into a little more detail regarding this topic:
I think the key takeaway from the video is when Matt says:
“Make great content and don’t worry nearly as much about how many years your domain is registered for. Just because someone is sending you an email that says Google does or even may use this in ranking, does not mean that you should automatically take them at face value. What makes a really big difference is the quality of your site and the sort of links that you have pointing to you, not, you know, is my site registered for three or four years, instead of one or two years.”
I don’t think Matt could have made the point any clearer: MAKE GREAT CONTENT – and build quality links.
Google Android and Apple iOS (iPhone) continue to grab market share among mobile phone subscribers in America, while RIM BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows Phone experienced a significant decrease during the past year (See table below).
Based on the latest comScore report published on May 1, 2012, Microsoft Windows Phone usage in America continues to drop over a one year span and hit a very a low level of 3.9% market share in March 2012.
Based on three surveys conducted by DiscountASP.NET in February 2011, October 2011 and March 2012 with a total number of respondents of 730, 522 and 701 respectively, among DiscountASP.NET clients in the U.S. Windows Phone market share remains steady at about 20% since February 2011. In terms of smartphone adoption, DiscountASP.NET surveys also found that our customers remain heavy users of Google Android and Apple iOS which followed consistently with comScore results.
The adoption of Windows Phone among ASP.NET web developers at DiscountASP.NET is relatively high compared to general smartphone market share in the USA. While Windows Phone is still the fourth most popular smartphone in the U.S., it is the third most popular mobile OS among DiscountASP.NET customers.
With increased support from large mobile phone carriers in America including AT&T and Verizon this summer, Windows Phone could potentially recapture its market share. AT&T launched the Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone handset in early April at a $99 price point for a two-year contract. To boost the Windows Phone market share, phone carriers and Microsoft could reach out to the ASP.NET web developer community through web hosting partners, as we observe that this niche is very loyal to Microsoft products.
Raise your hand if you’ve tried to do SEO for your site recently. It is a frustrating process to say the least.
First you have to sort through all the misinformation and so-called expert opinionss to get any concrete advice. Then once you get past all that, you learn that everything that has been recommended is really only speculation since no search engine will ever tell you exactly how it works. So now you’re left watching competitors dance around on the front page of Google, Bing and Yahoo, while your site isn’t even listed in the first 100 pages of any search engine.
I’ve been doing SEO work for almost 10 years now, and even for me it can get confusing and frustrating to navigate. So any time people came to us at DiscountASP.NET looking for SEO help, I do my best to point them in the right direction, either by debunking myths (e.g., You need a dedicated server for good SEO) or pointing them to sites where they can get a good start on SEO (SearchEngineLand.com is one of my favorites).
So with that being said, this video is a great introduction to search engines and SEO by Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, providing some answers to how Google works.
SQL Server 2012 is the first SQL Server product that can be installed on Windows Server Core. Windows Server 8 is also the first OS which you can switch between Server Core and Server Full (with GUI) implementations. Although SQL Server 2012 can be installed on Windows Server 8 Core directly from the command line or configuration file, the easier way would be installing it on Windows Server 8 Full with GUI and then switching the OS to Windows Core.
Start the Windows Server 8 setup:
Install Window Server 8 with GUI by choosing this option in the setup wizard
Install .NET Framework 3.5 Feature. In Server Manager, click on Add roles and features, and follow the wizard. Make sure the OS has access to the Internet as it will need it to install this feature. Please note that .NET Framework 4.5 is already installed on the server by default.
You can now go ahead and install all SQL Server 2012 features on Windows Server 8 the same way you would do so on any other Windows OS. After the installation, you can do the necessary configurations graphically.
After you have configured and tested your SQL Server instance, you can go ahead and switch the OS to Windows Server Core. Go to your Server Manager and select Remove Roles and Features from Manage menu. Note that the Server Manager in Windows 8 has separate interfaces for removing and adding server roles and you cannot do both at the same time as you were able to do in the previous versions of Windows.
In the Remove Roles and Feature Wizard, clear Graphical Management Tools and Infrastructures and Server Graphical Shell check boxes, and click Next.
After the server is restarted, you will see the command prompt only. Type sconfig in the command prompt and hit Enter and you will be presented with the following screen:
You can switch back to OS with GUI by selecting option 12 “Restore Graphical User Interface (GUI).” Your SQL Server instance is now running on Server Core and you can connect to it remotely with Management Studio.
I think a lot about how to increase the value of our hosting services and one way is through partnerships. So I talk to many vendors to see if there is a good fit for a partnership. A partnership can be worked out quickly or can take years to work out. In either case, one thing I do take time to look at while evaluating a potential partnership is the vendor’s press releases.
Why? Well, you can tell a lot about a company from their press releases. The following are some of the things I check out.
First off, do they have press releases or post any news on their web site?
There is no requirement for a company to have press releases, but every company that I would consider successful uses press releases. So if a company doesn’t have any news, then I usually check when they started the company. Are they a new startup and haven’t generated a lot of news yet? Or have they been around for a long time and just have nothing newsworthy to put out there?
Content
- Is the press release well-written?
If the release doesn’t read well or make any sense, that’s just a bad sign – period.
- Is the sole purpose of the press release Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Your natural search engine rankings are affected by the number of link-backs to your website. So doing press releases is one way to increase link-backs. If you are going to publish press releases, you should definitely make sure that your PR is search engine friendly for the keywords that are important to your business. However, this practice has also gotten out of hand and led to a proliferation of press releases whose only purpose is SEO.
Is there an unusual amount of keyword stuffing in the copy? Are there an unusual number of links in the release or forced use of anchor text for linking? Does the language and flow of the copy seem natural or forced? Those engaged in “PR spamming” should take into account that Google is always tweaking their ranking algorithm and it is just a matter of time before they clamp down on this PR spamming practice.
- Is the release newsworthy?
Is the press release newsworthy and compelling? For the most part you can easily tell if the purpose of the press release is just back-link creation and keyword stuffing.
- Is there a quote from a company representative?
In standard press release format, there should be a quote from a company representative. Does the company have one spokesperson or many? Who are they? Does the quote make sense in the context of the release? Is there a quote from another company/partner in the release? Who are they?
For extra credit, you can perform a Bing/Google search of the quote to see if the press release includes any template copy or if there is any plagiarism.
- Is the content one-dimensional or does it demonstrate a breadth of activity?
I’ve seen companies whose press releases are basically a series of customer profiles or newly won contracts and I’ve also seen companies just do monthly announcements of a new special promotion. There is nothing wrong with such press releases but is that the only newsworthy content they have?
- Is the PR content and web site content out of sync?
I’ve seen my share of press releases announcing a cool new feature, but when you check out the web site – there is no mention of the new feature. If you encounter this, you can get a sense of the internal communication challenges within the company.
Cadence
- How often does the company publish press releases?
You can get a sense of how actively a company is evolving and enhancing their product and services through the press release cadence. Is the last press release posted a couple of years old? Does the company work in spurts (i.e., are there periods of activity followed by long gaps)? If so, you have to ask yourself, why is this the case?
- How will our mutual partnership announcement flow as part of the company’s PR cadence?
I’m of the opinion that it’s not a good idea to have multiple press releases go out at once unless you are a huge company like Microsoft and just have that much stuff going on. For us, we try to stagger our press releases so that we and our partners have the most opportunity for exposure. So you want to make sure that both companies cadence for announcements sync up when you issue the press release. And you also want to avoid those times of the year that you would expect low readership as much as you can - e.g. major holidays.
Focus
- Is the content consistent with company’s branding?
From what you know about the company, do you think that the content of the releases are consistent with their branding? Are they making announcements that are tangential or unrelated to their business or brand? If so, you have to ask why?
- How does the company position itself?
Press releases often contain a short boiler plate description of the company. This is a great place to find out what the company thinks of itself and how it positions itself in the market.
- How has the company evolved over the years?
All companies evolve over time and you can read through the boiler plates of press releases over the course of several years and get an understanding of how a company has evolved.
Takeaway
By checking out the characteristics of a company’s press releases you can gain some insight about the company you are considering working with. These insights can help you get a feel of the strengths and weaknesses of the partner, help in negotiations, help define terms and/or each parties’ responsibilities, and it could be that some observations will serve as a red flag for you to walk away. Each deal is different so you’ll need to do your due diligence and make a judgment call on how to approach the potential partnership.
This article will discuss the general topic of creating an automated backup of your site. It is not a tutorial or step by step instructions.
DiscountASP.NET does not currently provide an interface such as a file manager to backup site contents and download them to your local computer. Most customers have backups of their site, but if you don’t have a backup of your site – that could potentially be disastrous if your site were compromised for example.
“So how do I download a backup automatically? I don’t want to manually FTP every day.”
.NET framework comes with a system.net class that has capability of initiating an FTP session. It can determine the file size and download files to your local computer. There are many articles and guides available out there, and if you can create the function with ASP.NET, you can pair it with the task scheduler (in the DiscountASP.NET Control Panel) to call the page at a certain time of day or use a .NET timer to initiate the page call to initiate the actual backup automation procedure.
“But I’m not a coder, so how do I pull down my files automatically?”
Enter FTP automation software.
There are tons of these programs available, ranging from free to very expensive. I have tested some of them and the one that stood out the most was ScriptFTP. It is easy to use, dependable and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.
After downloading and installing, simply create a script file (upload, download, sync, etc) and run it from the application. The main selling point for this software is the internal scheduler feature that is capable of running your custom ftp script at certain intervals. You can try ScriptFTP free for 30 days, but after that, this application worth every penny of the $29.95 price.
Finally, with the recent hype surrounding cloud, many of the big boys are offering free cloud storage solutions (iCloud, Google Docs, Microsoft Skydrive, etc.). In fact, Microsoft is offering free 7gb storage on Skydrive. We can incorporate this with the application’s upload capability to push the files to cloud storage after successful download so now you have a site backup available anytime, anywhere.
p.s.
I’m not related to the developers of this software in any way. It’s just a great tool that I wanted to tell you about.
Look, I don’t want to brag, but — oh, who am I kidding, I love to brag.
In the nearly 10 years that DiscountASP.NET has been in business we have racked up an impressive number of awards, recognition and trophies.
We believe that recognition and awards are a natural byproduct of being passionate about what you do. These kinds of things just find their way to you. And we’re thrilled to receive (and show off) each and every one of them.
But about a week ago we received something really special, a plaque from the Lincoln .NET Users Group thanking us for our support of the Nebraska Software Development Community. Take a look:
I know some of you are thinking, “The Lincoln .NET Users Group? So what? Aren’t you guys in Los Angeles? Don’t you hob-knob with celebrities and move with ease in powerful political circles?”
Well…ah <cough> sure — of course we do. 
But we also do everything we can to help support as many .NET user groups as we can find, from here in Southern California to New York and everywhere in between – all over the world, in fact. Including Nebraska.
We enjoy supporting .NET users everywhere, because that’s where the action is. These are the folks who are grinding it out and pushing the technology further and further every day. In short, they are our kind of people.
So yes, it means a lot to us to receive something like this. It will hang on our wall right along with all of the big shots.
Thanks Lincoln .NET Users Group!
In a previous post we showed you how to force a normal HTTP call to HTTPS. Today we’ll show you how to redirect from root to subdirectory.
The default page/homepage in your root directory would normally be displayed when someone makes an HTTP request to your site. But what if you installed an application in a subdirectory and want to use that application as a starting point? For example, WordPress is installed in a subdirectory, and you want the WordPress application to be the default starting point when someone types your URL.
There is sample code available in our Knowledge Base to redirect using .NET code. This requires the page to load and compile before the redirection happens. Now I want to show you redirection using the IIS manager/web.config instead. This should redirect the request faster as the redirection happens as soon as the HTTP request received by IIS.
Using IIS7 manager, connect to IIS and navigate to the URL rewrite module. Add a blank rule and name it as you wish. Only two variables are needed; match URL pattern and actions.
The parameters are as follows:
Match URL section:
Requested URL : Matches the pattern
Using : Regular Expression
Pattern : ^$
Action section:
Action Type : redirect
redirect URL : your relative subdirectory path e.g., if nopCommerce is installed in a subdirectory you would use /nopCommerce
redirect type : permanent
This will write to your web.config and add this section:
<system.webServer> <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="redirect" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="^$" /> <action type="RedirectToSubdir" url="/nopCommerce" /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> </system.webServer>
That’s all there is to it.
Remember than any changes you make with IIS Manager are written to web.config, so overwriting web.config in the future can remove those changes.
Juan Arbeláez is the CEO of XIGLA Software. They develop ready-to-use, high performance web-based software solutions aimed at small and medium size business and using Microsoft Technologies.
Hello Juan! Which technologies are you using for your web site?
Our focus is on ASP.NET development using Visual Basic .NET and SQL Server 2008 mostly.
How long have you hosted your site with DiscountASP.NET?
It’s been over 5 years and I regret not starting earlier with them!
Why did you choose DiscountASP.NET as your web hosting solution?
There are many reasons as to why DiscountASP.NET is your best bet. First, they have a single hosting plan with everything you need and at a very affordable price. Second, ASP.NET apps “just run” as they should without having to go back and forth a single time with their tech support (you can’t image what a pain it is to set a .NET app on other web hosts). Third, their support: even though you will barely need it (everything works as it should), for those times where things aren’t the way they should, DiscountASP.NET has proven to be extremely responsible, and I have to admit that the issues we have experienced have been because of some mis-configuration from our part, not theirs.
What do you consider to be the key benefits of using the DiscountASP.NET web hosting solution?
The ease to use and affordable price. Seriously, why not having a single plan that just works for everything you need? This is a big plus!
What future plans do you have for your web site?
We want to go mobile, and scale in order to be able to expand to markets like Facebook or Twitter, where a high scalability is required.
Which future technologies or trends are you most excited about?
Cloud computing. If only it could be as easy to set up as hosting a web site currently is, this would be a winning product!
The new SQL Server 2012 certifications are coming up soon and shall be available in June 2012. Instead of three professional-level certifications that have been available before, only two will be offered: Data Platform certification and the Business Intelligence certification.
Each of those new professional certification tracks will include five exams. In addition, those professional-level certifications will require recertification every three years. Recertification requirements will be limited to one or two exams.
Upgrading from SQL Server 2008 to 2012 professional certification will now require passing three exams. The details on upgrading and recertification examination are not available yet. The following are new SQL Server 2012 certificates:
Common Certifications for Both Tracks
- Exam 70-461: Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012
- Exam 70-462: Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases
- Exam 70-463: Implementing a Data Warehouse with Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Data Platform
- Exam 70-464: Developing Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases
- Exam 70-465: Designing Database Solutions for Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Business Intelligence
- Exam 70-466: Implementing Data Models and Reports with Microsoft SQL Server 2012
- Exam 70-467: Designing Business Intelligence Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Back in March I wrote about our new Facebook brand page design. I promised to tell you about a contest that we’re running around the new design, and here it is.
We think there are a lot of reasons to host with DiscountASP.NET, but we boiled it down to the top ten and made this infographic that you can download, print out and look at every morning while you brush your teeth.
Or, if you’re not that much of a fan, try this:
- Download the “top ten” infographic
- Print it out
- Stick it somewhere imaginative, interesting or strange
- Send us a picture of said placement (facebook@discountasp.net – see the official rules for details)
You have 30 days to carry out this important task – the deadline for entries is Saturday, May 5th.
We will choose the picture that brings us the most joy and the person responsible for sending it to us will win a Kindle Fire, and some official, high-class DiscountASP.NET swag.
It’s a prize package guaranteed to fill your mailbox!
You don’t have to be a DiscountASP.NET customer to enter, but why wouldn’t you be? Look, there are ten reasons for you to sign up right here!
We may post selected entries as they come in, so stay tuned. The winner will be announced here and on Facebook on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012.
<<< Click here to read the contest rules and fine print. >>>
A database is called contained when it is isolated and independent from the instance of SQL Server that hosts it and from the objects stored in system databases of that instance. The databases that are dependent on the SQL Server instance objects, such as SQL Server logins mapped to database users, are called non-contained. All databases that are hosted on SQL Server instances prior to SQL Server 2012 are non-contained.
SQL Server 2012 introduces the partially-contained databases where the dependency on SQL Server instance is significantly reduced. One of the most important dependencies that can be bypassed in partially-contained SQL Server 2012 databases is the databases dependency on the SQL Server logins mapped to database users. You can create a database user with password in a partially-contained database and then connect directly to that database. No SQL Server login principal is needed. You will need to specify the initial catalog (name of the database) you are connecting to. SQL Server will verify that this database exists, and then will let the database handle the authentication.
To be able to use partially contained databases, you will need to enable them at the instance level. In Object Explorer, right-click the server name, and then click Properties. In the Server Properties go to Advanced settings and set Enable Contained Databases to True.
Then you will need to set the Containment Type to Partial in the Database Properties of your database.
You can also set the containment type option to partial during the creation of your database. The system databases such as model database cannot be converted to partially contained databases.
The next step is to create user(s) with password(s) inside your partially contained database(s). In the Object Explorer of your Management Studio go to Databases >> YourDatabase >> Security, right-click on Users folder and select Properties. In the Database User properties go to General and select SQL user with password in the User type drop-down menu. Then enter User name and Password for your new user.
On the Membership page of your Database User option select the fixed database roles that you want your new contained database use to be part of.
Once the contained database user is created, you can connect to that database directly. To do so, you will need to specify the Initial Catalog, i.e. the database to which you are connecting with this user. When connecting to a contained database with Management Studio, in the Connect to Server dialog box, enter contained database user and password, and hit Options button.
In the Connect to database box type in the name of your contained database which you are connecting to.
If no initial catalog is specified, connection to a contained database will not be made, but the authentications will be passed to SQL Server instance instead. If the SQL Server login with the same name exists, connection will be made to the default database of that login. Contained database can have both SQL user with password and SQL user with login, therefore you can establish the connections to your database either directly with contained database user with password or through SQL Server login principal. Below is the approximate algorithm of the authentication process.
When you connect to a contained database with contained db user, you will see this database only. No SQL Server instace objects or other user databases will be displayed. Contained database user can still access mater and tempdb system databases as a guest, as well as other user databases on the same instance where the guest user was enabled.
Contained databases do not support change data capture, change tracking and replication,
Temporary tables in contained database are collated with the collation of that database instead of the collation of tempdb as in non-contained databases.
Contained databases are important in high availability solutions like AlwaysOn Availability Group. When databases are failed over another instance, it is easier for applications and users to re-connect to those databases as their connections do not depend on the SQL Server logins in a new instance.
We are pleased to announce that with Microsoft’s general availability release of SQL 2012, DiscountASP.NET is announcing the launch of SQL 2012 hosting as a new add-on option for our web hosting customers.
And we’ve enhanced this SQL database option by providing even more SQL disk space – 1000mb for SQL 2012.
SQL 2012 has improved performance and supports contained database features. We’ll be exploring SQL 2012 in future blog posts.
Enjoy…
