Site hosting news, tutorials, tips, How Tos and more
Earlier this year, Google announced that their Chrome browser v68 update will warn users that any non-HTTPS site is “Not Secure”. The release date for this update is slated for July 2018 – this month!
Check out what the Chrome browser will display (from the Chromium Blog):
Over the past years, Google has been slowly pushing all sites to be under SSL. Their efforts thus far shows that over 60% of Chrome traffic is now protected. Now that a majority of sites are protected, Google is moving to their next phase, which is to use their large install base of the Chrome browser to push even further. From our research, the update hasn’t made it out yet but it is slated for this month.
RapidSSL Flash Sale
So it is time to consider securing your site. And to help you out we are having a Flash Sale on RapidSSL SSL certificates.
For the rest of July we are reducing the RapidSSL pricing to:
1 Year: $29
2 Years: $50
Customers can order RapidSSL through their Control Panel and they can get this special pricing during this time period.
Other SSL Options
Please also note that you can use an SSL certificate that was purchased/obtained elsewhere with your Max and Ultimate hosting plan.
If you have any questions, please contact our technical support team.
I just found out that March 31st, 2018 is World Backup Day!
We had a quick meeting and decided to celebrate this special day by checking our backup system to make sure its functioning and continuing to backup our customer’s site/data like we do every day for disaster recovery.
If you haven’t done so in a while, we do recommend that you take the time to backup your websites and databases. March 31st would be a good day as any but it’s a good idea to make a schedule for backups at whatever time interval works for you and your needs. If you have any questions about backups, please contact our technical support team.
And if you want to celebrate World Backup Day everyday like us, then you can check out our SiteBackup service, which will automatically perform a daily backup of your website and databases for any of your websites hosted at Winhost or even websites and databases that are hosted at another hosting provider.
Happy World Backup Day!
Hosting on Windows 2016 is available as an option when you sign up. Windows 2016 hosting comes with IIS 10.X.
If you are an existing customer and wish to move to a Windows 2016 server, contact our technical support team and they can migrate your site.
Visit Winhost to learn more about our Windows hosting solutions
Scott Hanselman recently blogged about getting ASP.NET Core to run on a cheap shared Linux hosting account at GoDaddy. The point of the article was to demonstrate that .NET Core is cross-platform and can even run with all the constraints of a shared hosting plan.
The post was impressive, but Scott repeated several times and even put it in the title of his post – “Don’t try this at home” – because of all the hacky hoops you had to jump through to get .NET Core to work.
I found the post an interesting read, but while I was reading through the article, I couldn’t stop thinking – why go through all that trouble to run .NET Core on a “cheap” ($3/mo plan that turns into $8/mo) linux plan, when you can run .NET Core out-of-the-box on Windows hosting providers – like Winhost. Even with our Basic Windows hosting plan (that starts at $3.95/mo), .NET Core is supported.
At Winhost you can deploy .NET Core apps straight from Visual Studio or, if the specific Core framework version is not on the server, you can use Self-Contained Deployment.
I totally understand that Hanselman’s blog was a “theoretical” exercise to demonstrate the versatility of .NET Core. But when you actually want to do something real with .NET Core, you are going to want to be on a hosting environment that makes it easier for you, not harder.
As 2017 comes to a close, we reflect on the year that’s passed and look forward to a new year. Here are some of the new features, services and enhancements that we introduced in 2017.
Last year, we launched support for ASP.NET Core on our hosting platform. Since then, Microsoft has been busy with many minor updates and also a major update with ASP.NET Core 2.0. We’ve been working hard to support .NET Core and support the different versions that our customers may be using. Winhost supports Framework Dependent Deployment (FDD) and also Self-contained deployment (SCD).
While Microsoft continues to update their latest .NET Core initiatives, they continue to update ASP.NET 4.x as well. We kept up-to-date with Microsoft’s ASP.NET 4.x framework and support ASP.NET 4.7 hosting on our platform.
Since WordPress is one of the most popular apps on the web, we host a fair share of WordPress sites. Ans due to its popularity, WordPress gets a lot of attention from hackers, so we’ve helped many of our customers with compromises and hacks. To insure security, it’s important to keep up-to-date with WordPress updates, theme updates and plugin updates.
To that end, we understand that many of our customers may not have the time or the know-how to maintain their WordPress site – so we launched a Managed WordPress service. With our Managed WordPress service, we harden your WordPress application and will update your WordPress core, plugins and themes monthly. Our expert staff will also personally review your WordPress installation every month, looking for any signs of compromise or malicious files. And if any malicious activity is found, we’ll clean it up.
Due to customer requests, we added support for Node.js. If you are interested in using Node.js, get in contact with us.
We also increased the number of FTP users that can be created for each of our plans. The Basic plan supports 10 FTP users, the Max plan supports 30, and the Ultimate plan supports 100.
Although I didn’t highlight any of the behind-the-scenes activity in this list, you can rest assured that we continue to make improvements to our back-end infrastructure, security, processes, hardware and support.
We’re honored that so many of you trust Winhost with your important websites and applications, and we work hard every day to make you happy that you’ve made that choice.
Wishing everyone a very happy new year!
Visit Winhost to learn more about our Windows hosting solutions
This is the season when everyone is doing their annual recaps, so I figured we should do one too. We had a busy year on a lot of fronts, and here are just a few of the new features and services that we introduced in 2016.
ASP.NET Core (ASP.NET 5)
After a long wait and a naming convention change, Microsoft finally released their highly anticipated ASP.NET Core (formerly known as ASP.NET 5), and you didn’t have to wait for us to support it. We support ASP.NET Core on all our hosting plans that run on Windows 2012.
Microsoft SQL 2016
In 2016, Microsoft released their next SQL version and, of course, we made it available for you to use.
SpamExperts Email Spam Filter
You told us that you were frustrated with increasing spam, so we partnered with SpamExperts to bring you a cost-effective premium spam filter solution.
PHP 7
This year we introduced support for PHP 7. Even though we are a Microsoft-based host, we are keeping up with PHP too, so you can stay on the cutting edge of all aspects of web development.
New Top Level Domains
There are tons of new domain extensions available now, so we revamped our old domain registration system and introduced a handful of new domain extensions. We’ll be introducing even more in the future, and in the meantime we’re open to your feedback regarding other domain extensions you would like to see us offer.
Free Website Migration Services
We understand that moving a website can be a painful process and the prospects of moving can keep you stuck with a less than desirable host for longer than you’d like. We are making it easier to move your site to Winhost by offering free website migration services. Make it your new year’s resolution to finally rid yourself of your tired old host!
Have a great holiday season and a happy new year.
We interrupt this blog to bring you an announcement regarding a few layout changes in Control Panel.
1. The Account ID moved to the very uppermost navigation – next to Account & Billing:
2. The Related KB links on the right side column moved to the bottom – right above the footer:
3. For most of the control panel sections, we expanded the main section to span the entire control panel width.
That is all.
Please proceed to have a great weekend.
Today we’re announcing the availability of SQL 2016. It’s available now in the MS SQL Manager of Control Panel.
The new stretch database feature is enabled and you can learn more here. Some other new features include Query Store, Temporal Tables, and JSON Support.
And of course, there are no extra fees for SQL 2016 hosting.
