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7 Must-Haves for Effective ASP.NET 4.5 Hosting

ASP.NET 4.5 by Microsoft is the world’s most popular and heavily used open-source .net technology, according to Stack Overflow 2019 developer survey. It is used primarily for developing dynamic websites, as well as applications and services specifically for Windows, Windows Store, Windows Server, Windows Azure, and Windows Phone.

According to 2019 statistics on web hosting, there are approximately 1.94 billion functional websites from all over the world. Many of them are hosted on ASP.NET framework.

Millions of developers use this particular technology for various purposes, including database applications, client-server applications, XML web services, and distributed components, to name a few. Thus, it is critical for developers to host their sites and apps with reliable ASP.NET 4.5web hosting services providers to ensure the delivery of top-notch performance to their end-users.

However, with so many ASP.NET 4.5 types of web hosting packages available in the market today, picking one can be quite a challenging task. That said, the following 7 expert tips will help you find and maximize the right hosting product.

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1. Windows-Oriented Infrastructure

Since ASP.NET is basically a Microsoft creation, it runs better on infrastructure and hosting packages that are built on Windows. It has an intensive need for resources, thus it requires highly capable and very strong servers. That’s why majority of providers don’t offer cheap web hosting packages for ASP.NET 4.5.

While Linux is the more dominant name when it comes to web hosting due to its affordability and flexibility, the majority of developers prefer Windows. The ASP.NET 4.5 framework allows developers to create and modify apps, websites, and services without much difficulty in coding. That said, coding skills are still required. However, developing anything on ASP.NET 4.5 is easier and faster as opposed to doing so on hosting plans that are built on Linux and other platforms.

On top of that, ASP.NET 4.5 is compatible with all popular programming languages aside from their own (ASP Classic, Microsoft Access, and Microsoft Exchange). Although you can create applications and web services on Linux using Ajax, C #, HTML, Java, Javascript, you can’t perform that with Microsoft’s programming languages.

Several hosting solutions providers offer ASP.NET 4.5 hosting on Linux. If you want to go down this path, it’s best that you consult with your hosting services provider before making a purchasing decision.

2. Plesk Control Panel

When it comes to control panels, cPanel comes first in terms of usage and popularity. Many of the best web hosting for small business providers offer Linux-based plans. And most of these plans automatically come with cPanel.

But if you’re a developer who wants to maximize and benefit from all the advantages of an ASP.NET 4.5 hosting package, choose a solution that comes with Plesk.

Plesk boasts of a cleaner and more streamlined graphical user interface (GUI), something developers appreciate and value highly. The positioning of tools and features is very strategic. They are located on the left-hand side of the user-interface and can be expanded when clicked on. These features along with others is why many tech startup companies prefer Plesk over cPanel.

cPanel, although fast, is described by many as cluttered. Its features are not arranged and grouped in a strategic or friendly manner as those of Plesk. That said, the interface of cPanel can be customized per user’s preference and requirements.

Normally, cPanel only runs on Linux-based servers and operating systems. However, backdoor methods enable the deployment of cPanel on Windows servers. Both control panels have their uses. However, if you’re opting for an ASP.NET 4.5 hosting platform, you can never go wrong with Plesk.

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3. Real-Time Activity Monitoring

Monitoring user activities and application performance in real-time enables you to quickly spot performance issues and bottlenecks as they occur.

However, this means investing in and setting up site monitors, which could take a huge slice off of your budget. That said, it is a worthwhile investment as site monitors act as passive players, providing you with the real-time status of your web apps as well as user behavior and experience across various devices.

Whenever potential issues arise, like server downtime, freezing sites, laggy network connections, and more than usual cache misses, monitors capture all information and immediately alerts you and your team. This allows for rapid response and elimination of issues long before they can make a huge impact on your users’ experience.

4. Load Balancer

Some websites, apps, and web services are poorly written that they fail to scale when traffic increases. Most developers resort to adding more web servers or improving their capacities to accommodate large and growing traffic influx. But this method can be costly.

Adding a load balancer is found to be an effective remedy to help redistribute traffic so servers won’t overload. In a normal setting, traffic is sent to a server until it becomes full. When that happens, traffic is redirected to an empty server to ease off the load. Even with an extra server, user traffic that is processed and accommodated in the full server will experience performance issues such as lags and slow loading times.

With a load balancer working in the background, traffic is channeled and sent across multiple servers. It eliminates instances of a server overloading. This results in a consistent app and site performance, even during peak traffic hours. A load balancer is an additional investment. But it is cheaper than adding more servers and works better in helping improve your ASP.NET hosting.

5. Content Caching

Caching your content regularly helps accelerate the delivery of app content to your users. Most developers and website administrators cache their content by using faster devices, making content readily available by demand, and utilizing content delivery networks (CDN). Ideally, combining all three caching methods is the best set up.

In fact, 51.3% of all websites in the world do not use a content management system (CMS), according to 2019 Web Hosting Stats and Facts. That means more than half of the world’s websites are using crude caching methods, if they do at all.

Cached content allows for websites and apps to quickly deliver fully loaded pages to your users, instead of generating new pages from the server. This reduces the load off your server, thereby improving site and app performance significantly.

For instance, your app gets around 100 content requests per second. The app will get the content from your cache around  90% of the time. About 10% will be generated from your original server, thereby cutting down your server load.

Optimize Your Security and Know Your Bandwidth Requirement

While Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocols protect your sites, apps, and everything in it, they do affect the site and app performance. They are not optimized for speed.

There are several ways on how to optimize security protocols, such as Open SSL. It is best that you further explore your options and determine what’s the best security protocol optimizations for your sites and apps.

If your hosting budget allows you, choose for an ASP.NET 4.5 hosting plan that offers flexible bandwidth. Bandwidth is directly related to the loading speed and performance of your app, website, or service. Low bandwidth means your website won’t be able to handle large traffic, which then adversely affects the site’s loading speed and overall performance.

As mentioned earlier, ASP.NET 4.5 hosting is resource-intensive. Running your ASP.NET 4.5 site already requires a lot of resources. Imagine how much resources your website needs to fully operate while catering to a large influx of traffic.

You don’t have to settle for a package that has unlimited bandwidth. The best course for you is to determine the amount of bandwidth your site or app requires to attain optimal speed and performance. From there, it becomes a matter of finding the provider that can give you a solution that addresses your bandwidth requirement.

SharePoint 2013 Hosting – ASPHostPortal :: SharePoint 2013 Authorization and Authentication

OAuth in SharePoint 2013

In SharePoint 2010, the authentication to the site is based on Classic or Claims based or Anonymous Access but in SharePoint 2013, Microsoft come up with the new mode of Authentication called as €œOAuth€.

In case of SP sites, OAuth Process Flow is as follows

1. User Signs in SP 2013–>Security Token is generated by Identity Provider–>Token is validated & allows the user to Sign in SP sites.

OAuth is an open protocol for authorization. OAuth enables secure authorization from desktop and web applications in a simple and standard way. OAuth enables users to approve an application to act on their behalf without sharing their user name and password. For example, it enables users to share their private resources or data (contact list, documents, photos, videos and so on) that are stored on one site with another site, without users having to provide their credentials (typically user name and password).

OAuth enables users to authorize the service provider (in this case, SharePoint 2013) to provide tokens instead of credentials (for example, user name and password) to their data that is hosted by a given service provider (that is, SharePoint 2013). Each token grants access to a specific site (for example, a SharePoint document repository) for specific resources (for example, documents from a folder) and for a defined duration (for example, 30 minutes). This enables a user to grant a third-party site access to information that is stored with another service provider (in this case, SharePoint), without sharing their user name and password and without sharing all the data that they have on SharePoint.

2. When is using OAuth required?

The OAuth protocol is used to authenticate and authorize apps and services. The OAuth protocol is used:

- To authorize requests by an app for SharePoint to access SharePoint resources on behalf of a user.
- To authenticate apps in the Office Store, an app catalog, or a developer tenant.

3. Access Tokens

In SharePoint 2013, an OAuth STS is used only for issuing tokens (that is, server-to-server and context tokens). An OAuth STS is not used for issuing sign-in tokens, that is, they are not used as identity providers. So, you will not see an OAuth STS listed in the user sign-in page, the Authentication Provider section in Central Administration, or the people picker in SharePoint 2013.

But, SharePoint 2013 administrators can use Windows PowerShell commands to enable or disable an OAuth STS. SharePoint administrators are able to enable or disable OAuth for a given web application, similar to how they can enable or disable trusted login providers in SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint 2013 implements the OAuth protocol to allow apps that are running external to SharePoint to access protected SharePoint resources on behalf of a resource owner. In the SharePoint incoming implementation of the protocol, the OAuth roles are played by the following components:

External apps take on the role of the client.

SharePoint users take on the role of resource owner.

SharePoint 2013 takes on the role of the resource server.

ACS takes on the role of the authorization server.

4. Scope

An app for SharePoint requests permissions to access SharePoint resources by doing the following:

An app for SharePoint requests the permissions that it needs during installation from the user who is installing it.

The developer of an app must request, through the app manifest file, the permissions an app needs.

5. For an app to be granted the permissions it requested, the following conditions must be fulfilled:

An app must be granted permissions by the user who is installing it.

Users can grant only the permissions that they have; the user installing the app must be able to grant all permissions required by the app, or app installation fails.

6. An app is granted the permissions it asked for when:

An app is installed by a website administrator.

An app is explicitly granted permission by a tenant administrator or website administrator.

An end user gives consent.

In the app manifest file, an app requests access to specific scopes (that is, locations on SharePoint 2013). An app for SharePoint uses a permission request to specify the permissions that it needs to function correctly. The permission requests specify both the rights that an app needs and the scope at which they need the rights. In short:

An app uses permission request scopes to specify the permissions that it needs.

The requests specify both the rights and the scope that the app needs.

Scopes indicate where in the SharePoint hierarchy a permission request applies. SharePoint supports four different content scopes: site collection, website, list, and tenancy. There are also feature scopes for performing search queries, accessing taxonomy data, social features, Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS) features, and Project Server 2013 features.

7. Steps in the SharePoint 2013

The OAuth authentication and authorization flow for a SharePoint 2013 cloud-hosted app is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

1. A user types a URL in a browser to go to a SharePoint page where a particular app is installed. In this case, the app is a Contoso.com app and the user interface element on the SharePoint page comes from the Contoso.com app.

2. SharePoint processes the page and detects that there is a component from the Contoso.com app on the page. SharePoint must get a context token that it can send to the Contoso.com app. SharePoint asks ACS to create and sign a context token that contains context information (for example, the current user, what web is being rendered on SharePoint, and other context information) and an authorization code. This context token can be used later by Contoso.com to request an access token from ACS. The Contoso.com server can use the access token to talk back to SharePoint if the Contoso.com app wants to make a web service call to SharePoint later.

3. ACS returns the signed context token to SharePoint. The signed context token is signed with an client secret that only ACS and the Contoso.com app share.

4. SharePoint renders the page, including an IFRAME pointing to the app host server in this case, Contoso.com. When SharePoint renders the page, it also passes the context token to the IFRAME.

5. The IFRAME causes the browser to request a page from the Contoso.com server. The context token is included in the browser request that is sent to the Contoso.com server.

6. The Contoso.com server gets the context token. Contoso.com validates the signature on the context token. The token is signed with an client secret that only Contoso.com and ACS share. Contoso.com can validate that the token is really intended for it and that it is not a random request from some random server. It knows that it is part of a SharePoint request.

7. If the Contoso.com server wants to talk back to SharePoint, there is a refresh token in the context token that Contoso.com can extract, so that it can include that information in the request to ACS for an access token. Contoso.com uses the refresh token that it extracted from the context token, the context token that it got from SharePoint, and its credentials (which are its client Id value and its client secret value) to request an access token from ACS so that it can talk back to SharePoint.

8. ACS returns an access token to the Contoso.com server. Contoso.com can cache this access token. That way, the Contoso.com server doesn’t have to ask ACS for an access token every time that it talks back to SharePoint. (Or, Contoso.com can make an access token request every time and not cache the access token.) By default, access tokens are good for a few hours at a time. Each access token is specific to the user account that is specified in the original request for authorization, and grants access only to the services that are specified in that request. Your app should store the access token securely, because it is required for all access to a user’s data.

9. Contoso.com can use the access token to make a web service call or CSOM request to SharePoint, passing the OAuth access token in the HTTP Authorizationheader.

10. SharePoint returns the information that Contoso.com requested to Contoso.com. The Contoso.com app renders the IFRAME contents as a per-user request in step 1. This completes the OAuth transaction process. The user now sees the SharePoint page fully rendered.

SharePoint 2013 Hosting with ASPHostPortal.com :: Search Feature Not Working, How to Fix it?

When we test search feature in SharePoint 2013, it stop working and this is the error message:

The Problem

Turns out, the issue was due to URLs being configured in the Content Sources that either didn’t exist, or did not have a proper DNS entry that pointed the server to the correct location.

How to Fix it?

  • Navigate to Central Administrator
  • Click Application Management
  • Click Manage service applications
  • Click Search Service Application
  • Under Crawling section click Content Sources
  • Click Local SharePoint Sites
  • In the Start Addresses section (see below) remove all URL’s that do not exist

  • Click OK
  • Then try again and it should work now

Why are these URL’s a problem?

Our search server was locking up whenever a crawl would run. This meant that a full crawl or even an incremental crawl never finished. Obviously the issue was due to the site not existing or not being available for the crawler to index the content.

Hope this issue really help you all.

SharePoint 2013 Hosting with ASPHostPortal :: Tips SEO for Your SharePoint 2013 Site

As we may know that SharePoint 2013 has introduced many new features that more interesting than previous SharePoint. In this article, we will share how to optimize your SharePoint site. We are going to show you a few simple things you can do with your SharePoint Online website which will help you get started with your quest for the search rankings.

1. Use SEO Tools

This might sound obvious, but remember to use the tools that are provided. You don’t have to just jump straight into code to get started with your SEO. SharePoint Online Public website gives you a couple of tools to manage your Meta tags, as well as allowing you to choose custom URLs for pages.

Metadata

HTML Meta tags used to be the most recognized way to bump a page up in the search results page. Meta tags influence has been greatly reduced by most search engines, and they probably won’t help you increase your search ranking.

However, it has been suggested that leaving out Meta tags can negatively impact your search ranking. This means it’s still well worth adding Meta tags to the page; this is especially the case with your SharePoint Online Public website, as it has been made incredibly easy to add keywords to your pages.

To manage your Keywords, go to any page and select “Page” from the ribbon. From here, you can go to Edit Properties > Edit SEO Properties.

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You can also manage site-wide Meta tags by going to Site Settings > Search engine optimization settings. This page lets you add Meta tags to the whole of your site.

In their example, it is useful for verifying your site for “Some Internet search engines” and their webmaster tools. You can then choose whether to actually use the Meta tags or not.

Page URLS

The URL of a page can sometimes play a significant role in the discoverability of a site. If a URL is kept short, simple and relevant, it makes it easier for both search engines to describe the content, and users to remember the link to get straight back to that content.

You can update any pages URL by navigating to the page, opening it edit mode, and clicking Edit Properties > Edit Navigation Properties

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From here, you can select your new URL. This screen also lets you update how the page appears in your sites navigation.

You can also give it some descriptive text which will appear when you hover over it in the navigation. Again, it’s usually good to make this text descriptive, including keywords that are relevant to the destination page.

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2. Change the Robots.txt File

The robots.txt file defines what content a search crawler is and is not allowed to index. This doesn’t mean that a user cannot get to that content, it just means that a search engine should never display that page when a user searches for your site.

You can get to this by going to Site Settings > Search Engine Sitemap Settings. SharePoint will have already set up a couple of the obvious one’s for you.

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At this point, you can disallow any of the pages, or directories that you don’t want to be crawled. We’d recommend disallowing the crawling of any List pages, if that content is already being surfaced somewhere else on your site.

This is mainly because it’s of no use to your site visitors, but it could also potentially be seen as spam content. This is because it’s likely to be very keyword heavy, and also very similar (content wise) to the page that it is being surfaced on.

3. Create Simple Master Page

The default master pages that are provided on SharePoint Public Websites are the same master pages that are used for internal SharePoint sites.

This means that there is a lot of extra code in the master page which can mean sloppy HTML, and unnecessary file downloads. If you customise your master page, you can ensure that you have cleaner code, and make use of better Meta tags and micro formats to increase the machine readability of your site.

4. Check Your Documents

In many circumstances, the main content which a site is offering is actually stored in documents, and not in web pages. This content comes in forms of PDFs and Word documents to name but a few.

If you want this content to be indexed, you must think about how a search engine will find it. If you are just uploading a document to a document library, will it ever be read? There are 2 quick ways of improving the chances of somebody finding this document

Please follow this steps how to implement it:

The first way is to ensure your document names contain keywords describing the contents of the document. For example, the URL for a pdf uploaded to your documents library may look something like this: ‘/documents/blog-improve-sharepoint-site-seo.pdf’. This means that the content of the document is clear to both your site users and a search engine.

Our second tip to improve the way you offer documents, is to ensure that you are linking to your documents from other places in your site. This is a general rule for any type of site, however it is especially relevant for SharePoint 2013. Document libraries and Lists are often rendered with Client Side Rendering in SharePoint 2013.

What does this mean to SEO? When the page loads, none of the content from your document library is rendered as HTML. Instead, a large JavaScript object is created, and then transformed into HTML dynamically after the page has downloaded. This will mean that a search engine will not easily be able to read this list or library.

This can be seen if you look at the snippet that Google shows for some of your pages. Whilst we was writing this blog, we noticed that page with the Documents app on was displaying as : “javascript:commonShowModalDialog(‘{SiteUrl}’+ ‘/_layouts/15/itemexpiration.aspx’ +’?ID={ItemId}&List={ListId}’, ‘center:1;dialogHeight:500px”.

This is useless to a user, and does not inform them what this page is about. By following the tips above about Meta tags, this may prevent this from happening, however it will still not find the links to the document. Instead you should be linking directly to the document. When you do this, it’s also a good idea to set the text of the link to some keywords, rather than just “download” or something equally ambiguous.

So there’s our quick tips on improving the search rating of your SharePoint Online Public Site. There are probably a lot more things you can do to help improve it, and as Office 365 (2013) approaches General Availability, we hope to be adding some more details around the topics above in the near future.

SharePoint 2013 Hosting with ASPHostPortal :: Why You Must Use SharePoint 2013?

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Previously, we wrote about the factors that makes difference between SharePoint 2013 with previous SharePoint. Now, we will discuss more about why you must use SharePoint 2013 for your business. SharePoint has seen widespread adoption across all types of organizations over last five years. SharePoint 2010 brought us some major changes (compared to MOSS 2007), and SharePoint 2013 continues that trend by introducing some new cutting edge features for web content management, workflow, search, and big data.

We have figured out some reasons why SharePoint 2013 is very interesting for your business.

Document ManagementSharePoint 2013 Search

In SharePoint 2013, SkyDrive Pro is a new attempt at taking your content offline and replace SharePoint Workspace. The experience of taking your documents offline has also been improved by simply clicking the sync button. This is much more of the “drop box” experience that I hear is massively being adopted for its ease of use in businesses.

User Interface

When you first see SharePoint 2013, you realize it is a significant change over what is now in SharePoint 2010. The main changes are the “less is more” theories being applied in cleaning up the interface. Getting rid of some of the SharePoint-nuances like “Site Actions” and replacing with settings cog icon, having the getting started “Modern UI” tiles being front and center – but more importantly removable – getting rid of the useless photo that survived both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 in team site template! It feels like a more polished, ”user first” user interface.

Search

Search enables us to discover information quickly, and SharePoint 2013 enables me to find things much more quickly with quick document previews in the web browser, much better search refiners on the left-hand side, and subtle improvements like “view library” and “send”.

Web Content Management

Running internet facing sites on SharePoint has been around since MOSS 2007, but didn’t really mature in SharePoint 2010. With that said, it is clear that there is a great focus on this for SharePoint 2013. From a business productivity perspective, this not only benefits internet facing site authors, but also internal sites that want these advanced publishing features. Improvements in embedding video directly into pages, much shorter URLs, and the ability to have better multi-lingual and multi-device support means that your Intranet, Extranet will work much better!

Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence continues to evolve in SharePoint 2013 with improvements across the board in Excel client, Excel services, PerformancePoint services and Visio services. The in-memory capabilities of Excel client now allow business users to pull data from various sources and build amazing sheets in minutes.

Social

Facebook and Twitter are the kings of social and have been around for a long time, and with the release of SharePoint 2013 some of the user experiences have been introduced. For me, the biggest additions are the “@” symbol to lookup people to reference in social activity updates, the new communities with badges to gamify collaboration, and the ability to follow not only people but also documents, sites and tags. SharePoint 2010 was really missing the last piece to truly encourage users to adopt social and invest the time in social tagging.

Improved workflow

With SharePoint 2013, the old SharePoint 2010 engine is maintained as-is but a new add-on called “Workflow Manager” can be downloaded and installed separately.  Workflow Manager can run on its own server and has its own respective databases for the manager itself and the Service Bus.

Big data support

Support for big data has been added.  SharePoint 2013 allows for much larger data sets thanks to updated integrated PowerPivot technology.  Built on the Vertipaq engine, large data sets can be compressed and filter while in memory on the server, allowing operations on the data occur very fast.

The Power View data modeling and visualization engine for Excel has also be updated.  User can leverage Power View with large data sets to create visualizations with charts, graphs, runtime data filtering, and slicers.

 

For us, above point are top reasons why you must use SharePoint 2013. Have you try this newest SharePoint 2013? If not, you must try it on our SharePoint 2013 hosting environment with very affordable hosting plan

 

SharePoint 2013 Hosting with ASPHostPortal.com :: The Most Important Factors Between SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2010

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SharePoint 2013 has many interesting feature that help you in organization. The platform is prompting a lot of interest, and there are some compelling reasons to make the move, according to an article from SharePoint Pro. What the interesting feature that improve in SharePoint 2013? In here we will describe the most difference between SharePoint 2013 with previous SharePoint 2010 and 2007.

Top Interesting Feature in SharePoint 2013

SearchSharePoint 2013

The integration of FAST Search Server capabilities into SharePoint 2013 represents a significant upgrade. Even better, it’s available out of the box with little to no configuration required. FAST provides a better search experience, which should lead to increased confidence in SharePoint’s search capabilities and better adoption.

User interface

The more modern user interface in SharePoint 2013 provides a nicer experience. It’s cleaner and easier to navigate compared to previous versions.

Cloud

Many see SharePoint 2013 as a stepping-stone to moving to a cloud-based collaboration solution.

Mobile

Mobile access is becoming an increasingly vital part of improving productivity.

Power users

SharePoint is increasingly standardized and gets continuously easier to use. That means there are now power users, often business process analysts, who want to use SharePoint and may go around IT to do so if necessary, according to the article.

If you compare with SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2007, then there will be quite differences feature. Many large organizations invested a significant amount of money into SharePoint 2010 and made many customizations. We also believe because that factors, there are many clients that migrate from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013.

Conclusion

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