Appliedi.net Windows Web Hosting Blog

Since we first pre-launched the AppliedI blog (all of last week) and introduced it to a handful of customers we’ve had a few questions about the blog and the platform we’re using. This post will hopefully address those questions.

What server platform and blog engine are you using and why?

Our blog is currently hosted on a Windows 2003 server running IIS6 (like 90% of the rest of our network).  There are many outstanding blogging engines available today and some of the most popular are:  Community Server, Sharepoint, dasBlog, subText, MoveableType, WordPress and Drupal

to name a few. We opted to use WordPress for several reasons which we’ll address later. This isn’t saying WordPress is the best blogging engine available and that you should drop whatever engine you use today and move to wordpress but it definitely demonstrates that wordpress is a viable blogging solution on Windows.

WordPress uses PHP as the script engine and MySQL as the database. Windows, IIS, MySQL and PHP are often referred to as WIMP!

Why WordPress?

There is a very large community that has adopted wordpress. In fact wordpress is probably one of the most widely used blog engines available. The large number of plugins, enhancements, hacks and themes available for wordpress made it a clear choice.

One of our favorite features built into wordpress is the Akismet comment spam filter. Comment spam is when someone comes along and posts a comment in your blog for the sole purpose of creating links from your site to their site. This causes the search engines to believe your site and their site are somehow related and may have adverse affects on your own website’s search engine ranking.  The AppliedI.net is a very recognized and linked to website and as such is a definite target for comment spammers and Akismet was one of the deciding factors to use WordPress. Many other blogging platforms support Akismet including dasBlog.

What features in WordPress are you using?

Today we have the following features implemented in our wordpress blog:

• Akismet for comment spam
• aLinks to provide automatic keyword linking
• FeedBurner Feedsmith to manage feed subscriptions
• Ultimate Tag Warrior to tag posts
• Translate to provide translations in various languages
• WP lightbox 2 to provide that ever so cool image popup feature
• WordPress Widgets
• Dean Lee’s permalinks ISAPI filter to provide search engine friendly text links

The theme we’re currently using is called GlossyBlue but we have a custom theme in the works.

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Over the past several months we have been working diligently to provide a new support portal for our hosting customers. At Applied Innovations we strive to provide not only the best technologies and tools to our hosting customers but to make these tools easy to use and our support knowledgebase is no exception to this commitment. 

What’s a Knowledgebase?

The knowledgebase (or KB as it’s also referred to) is a self-help support portal located at http://support.appliedi.net/. This portal provides thousands of articles and references for our hosting customers on everything from flash tutorials on how to setup email in Outlook to how to install and configure dotnetnuke.

Why the change? I liked the old system!

The old knowledgebase was great but overtime it began lacking features and functionality that we wanted to provide to our customers. An example of this is the auto-suggest feature in our knowledgebase. 

From within the knowledgebase if you go to http://support.appliedi.net and submit a new support ticket as you’re typing the support ticket message contents you’ll see a search results panel appear suggesting articles that the knowledgebase believes are related to your question.

 The image to the left shows 3 different suggestions based on body of my support request.

By providing this type of live feedback to our hosting partners you’ll have easy, instant access to the answers within the knowledgebase.

The new knowledgebase also does a full text search on articles providing better results and more accurate matches.

Auto-Suggest is a great feature but it’s not the only reason we selected this new system. We wanted a solution that would provide better integration of livechat and email support. With this new system you’ll be able to log into the support portal and see all your past livechat and email support requests.  We find that often the same client has the same question and by providing a support request history you’ll be able to search through your past support requests quickly and find the answer to that past question.

What’s to come?

The Applied Innovations knowledgebase (http://support.appliedi.net/) has been a key part of our hosting service since our initial webhosting launch in 1999. Over the years it has continued to be redesigned and improved upon and this is but the latest improvement. 

Our knowledgebase is accessed thousands of times each day from clients across the globe and is updated almost daily with new articles and information and we recommend you visit it frequently.

We hope the new changes to the knowlegebase are a welcomed addition to your hosting services.

[tags]appliedi.net, appliedi support, webhosting support, support knowledgebase, asp.net support[/tags]

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The Internet has had a profound affect on how we communicate as a society. Today, everyone agrees that e-mail is not just a clever novelty but has become a major component into our livelihoods, both on a professional and a personal level. Much like e-mail developed over the years blogging is also developing and becoming a staple in our daily lives. We hope the AppliedI blog follows along the path of the other great blogs on the Internet and creates a new channel of communication, education and sharing between you, our e-business partner and us, your webhosting provider.

What is a blog?

From wikipedia:

A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and displayed in reverse chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.

What will I find here?

We hope the AppliedI.net blog will become a new source of information for you to learn about the latest news and happenings within Applied Innovations. This blog will be used to announce new services, new features and enhancements to your hosting services. The blog will be used to provide you cutting edge information on the latest web technologies.

[tags] appliedi.net, blog, appliedi blog[/tags]

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Applied Innovations (http://www.appliedi.net), a Microsoft Gold Certified provider of the Windows-based ASP.NET, Microsoft SQL Server, Shared and Application Hosting solutions, announced today that two company executives, Jess Coburn, CEO, and Carlos Caneja, CTO, will speak at the Connections Business Technology Conference, held this week in El Segundo, Calif.

The event, hosted by AspDotNetStorefront, maker of the leading asp.net shopping cart platform for developers, and Interprise Solutions, maker of the Interprise Suite CRM and business management system, will be attended by application developers from various business and technical backgrounds. In their presentation on Wednesday, Coburn and Caneja will discuss the logistics of ASP hosting and provide tips for developers when working with hosts. The two will also host education sessions at the Applied Innovations booth in the exhibit hall.

For full details visit: http://www.appliedi.net/company-information/press-releases/aspdotnetsf.html

Popularity: 1% [?]

BOCA RATON, Fla., March 12, 2007 ?Applied Innovations (http://www.appliedi.net), a Microsoft Gold Certified web hosting provider specializing in Windows-based Hosting solutions, today introduced Windows Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting powered by SWsoft Virtuozzo virtualization software and Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

?Virtual Private Servers represent the next evolution of shared hosting and we find it very important to continually enhance our services to meet the ever increasing needs of our clients, especially growing businesses, developers and resellers,? said Jess Coburn, CEO, Applied Innovations.

Learn more about AppliedI.net’s Windows VPS Hosting offering at: http://www.appliedi.net/vps-hosting/

Read the full News Release at: http://www.appliedi.net/company-information/press-releases/virtuozzo.html

Popularity: unranked [?]

Boca Raton, Fla. (2/06/2007)?Applied Innovations (http://www.appliedi.net), a Microsoft Gold Certified provider of Windows-based ASP.NET, Microsoft SQL Server, Shared and Application Hosting solutions, has begun offering a free hosting service powered by Microsoft?s upcoming Web server technology, Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0.

?We are very excited to offer such cutting edge web technology to web developers”  “this is a great opportunity to become familiar with tomorrows technology, today” said Applied Innovations Chief Technical Officer Carlos Caneja. ?IIS7.0 ultimately represents to our clients a huge leap forward in Web server technology, in terms of both product reliability and technical aptitude. We are constantly looking for ways to provide our clients an edge in the competitive online marketplace and this is just one example of our commitment to do so.? 

Sign up for FREE IIS7 Hosting at: http://www.appliedi.net/iis7-hosting/

View the full News Release at: http://www.appliedi.net/company-information/press-releases/iis-7-beta-hosting.html

Popularity: 1% [?]

Boca Raton, Fla. (1/29/2007)?Applied Innovations (http://www.appliedi.net), a Microsoft Gold Certified Web hosting provider specializing in Windows-based ASP.NET, MS SQL, Shared and Application Hosting solutions, introduced today support for ASP.NET AJAX hosting, formerly referred to as ASP.NET Atlas.

?We are excited that with Microsoft?s release of ASP.NET AJAX, we will be able to offer our customers the opportunity to create dynamic and innovative Web applications,? said Applied Innovations Senior Administrator Wayne Lansdowne. ?Web 2.0, as it has been coined, ultimately redefines the Web as a distributed computing platform instead of a network for merely serving static content. The proliferation and standardization of new technology that enable this movement is critical to the future of the Internet.?

Applied Innovations will offer ASP.NET AJAX hosting to all customers at no additional charge. New customers can take advantage of 3 months free ASP.NET AJAX hosting and a free SQL2005 Database when they sign up.

For more information about Applied Innovations ASP.NET AJAX Web hosting, please visit http://www.appliedi.net/aspnet-hosting/ajax-hosting.html

Read the full news release at:

http://www.appliedi.net/company-information/press-releases/asp-net-ajax-supported.html

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