For those of you who don’t know, we offer an API for our customers to use. We expose enough methods to allow you to pretty much do anything you want. Some of the more popular include:
– Ability to recycle application pool as well as Start/Stop IIS
– Backup SQL database
– Create/Delete email addresses and email aliases
– Get usage information for SQL, Diskspace, Email
You can get can see a complete list of methods here.
Even though some of you may not have a need for our API, it’s still a great way to test out something else your working on. For example, I started a Silverlight project that uses the API to create a scaled down version of our control panel. I thought it would be a good idea to make the project available to our customers and let them use it and turn it into whatever they want – make it an open source project of sorts.
You can download the project here.
One thing to note is that you are going to need to enable access to the DiscountASP.NET API. This can be done via the Customer API section of your control panel. You can also get your API key there. You will also need to make sure you have the Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio if you don’t already. As well as the Silverlight 4 Developer Runtime. Some of you may also want the Expression Blend SDK if you do not have expression blend installed on your computer
The API looks like it has improved a lot. I gave up on the earlier version, but I’ll definately give it another go.
I’m a little nervous about using Silverlight as we tested an app on another hosting provider we use and the web site/domain in question got dropped by Google.
Please do use the API and let us know your feedback. Also, Silverlight is only one option for you to consume the APIs we’ve made available.
As for google rankings – sure things like Silverlight and Flash can affect search engine ranking as the search engine spider can have some difficulty in indexing. So, you may not want to replace a website completely with a silverlight site, but rather incorporate silverlight into parts of the website so that you use the HTML text…etc. that are standard SEO practices.
Microsoft is also working on addressing issues of SEO with Silverlight. Here are some links I found:
http://silverlightseo.codeplex.com/
http://www.silverlight.net/learn/whitepapers/seo-for-silverlight/
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brada/archive/2010/03/17/mix2010-search-engine-optimization-seo-for-microsoft-silverlight.aspx
“Awesome!!! I wish you guys would do more stuff like this. The wait cursor rectangle trick is cool. Nice touch – keep it up!”