Blog > Brad Kingsley
The official blog of managed hosting provider OrcsWeb.
4 Reasons Microsoft SQL Server CE is a Great Hosted Database Option
Tuesday, April 19
posted by Brad Kingsley
I mentioned SQL Server Compact 4 (CE) last fall and have since had a chance to use it in a few projects. It's a great option for many web applications so I wanted to share some thoughts with you...
Web Hosting Updates Made Easy via Web Deploy
Wednesday, April 6
posted by Brad Kingsley
Microsoft's Web Deploy, which can be used standalone or as part of WebMatrix or the Visual Studio tools, makes deploying web applications to your hosted production environment super easy! Here I'm showing a few screenshots as I go through the process of publishing an Orchard CMS site from WebMatrix to a shared hosting site.
4 Easy Steps to Connect IIS7 Remote Manager To Your Site
Tuesday, March 29
posted by Brad Kingsley
The IIS Manager for Remote Administration let's you connect to a properly configured IIS7 site from a remote PC so that its settings can be managed through the standard console interface. Making the connection is a lot easier than you realize. Below are the four steps with screenshots...
Six Ways to Speed Up Your Website
Wednesday, February 9
posted by Brad Kingsley
Here's a short article by Inc giving their thoughts on Six Ways to Speed Up Your Website.
Below are the bullet-points but click the link above to read the entire article:
1. Put blocking JavaScripts at the bottom of the page.
2. Improve loading time of key page content.
3. Put style sheets at the top of the page content.
4. Minimize the number of HTTP requests.
5. Consider deploying Web acceleration hardware.
6. Make sure core content is not delayed by extraneous elements.
Happy Hosting!
WebMatrix, Orchard CMS, and SQL CE Hosting Made Easy
Friday, January 28
posted by Brad Kingsley
OrcsWeb's shared hosting plans, dedicated servers, and Cloud Servers all support everything necessary to leverage Microsoft's WebMatrix development tool. They also include ASP.NET 4.0 and support for SQL Server Compact (SQL CE), which means supporting free content management solutions such at Orchard CMS or Umbraco are no problem!
Happy hosting!
Your Business Needs an eCommerce Website to Grow
Monday, January 17
posted by Brad Kingsley
Here is an interesting article by HubSpot giving four great reasons that your business should have an e-commerce web site to grow the overall business. http://orcs.ws/fihTI5
We have a small business shared hosting plan that is ideal for hosting an e-commerce web site. OrcsWeb's shared hosting plans are managed shared hosting plans - we'll help you and/or your developers as needed to get the site configured and working, and always be available to consult or help with adjustments or troubleshooting over time. We are known for our services and support, and leveraging our experience to support ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server in hosting environments.
IIS7 Application Pool Idle Time-out Settings
Wednesday, January 12
posted by Brad Kingsley
If you self-administer a web server it is good to know that by default IIS7 sets application pools to "time-out" after 20 minutes of inactivity. So if you don't have a visitor to your site within 20 minutes the application pool will shut down - freeing up those system resources. Then the next time a request comes into the site IIS7 will automatically restart the application pool and serve up the requested pages.
This is a great way to preserve resources since every running application pool does place a certain amount of overhead on the system. But, it also means that the first request - the one that causes the application pool to restart - is very slow. It is slow because the process literally needs to start, then load the required assemblies (like .NET) then load the requested pages. Depending on the size and complexity of your application, this might just be a couple of seconds or it might take 30+ seconds (during which time a user would likely give up and move on to a different site).
For screenshots and steps on how to adjust this setting, visit this blog post:
Build The Perfect Database Connection String
Thursday, December 2
posted by Brad Kingsley
Do you wish you had a little tool that could help you always build the perfect connection string - and test it out before using it in your code?
Robots.txt File's Role Explained
Tuesday, November 2
posted by Brad Kingsley
Here is a neat infographic explaining the role of a robots.txt file
http://www.elliance.com/aha/infographics/robotstxt-file-explained.aspx?page=6
Happy hosting!
How to Perform a 301 Redirect from a Global.asax File
Wednesday, October 27
posted by Brad Kingsley
Today I wanted to set a site so that any request to the old domain name would redirect to the new domain name. I struggled with some URL rewrite rules for a while and never did get them to work (yet) so I reverted to something I'm more familiar with - .NET and the global.asax file. Here's how I solved this problem...
