MICROSOFT "GO LIVE" LICENSE ALLOWS HOSTING WITH BETA SOFTWARE

If you are a programmer or developer, you probably know that Microsoft is putting the finishing touches on a major new version of Visual Studio and ASP.NET -- the programming tools and language used for developing dynamic data-driven websites.

Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 are the highly anticipated next version of these widely used tools and have been undergoing alpha and beta test cycles during the past year.

Microsoft has just announced "GO LIVE" licenses for these beta products.  in a nutshell, the "GO LIVE" license allows everyone writing web applications or designing websites using these tools to actually deploy them for commercial use.  (Prior to the "GO LIVE" license, you were allowed to use the tools for testing and educational purposes but could not use them for any live commercial website.)

Although the software is still in Beta, the "GO LIVE" status means that the tools are close to "production quality" and suitable for real-life use.

We are excited to announce that we are now hosting websites developed using Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0.  To insure maximum success and zero impact on existing sites, we have deployed a separate server that will be used only to host ASP.NET 2.0 sites.

For a limited time, we are offering ASP.NET 2.0 hosting for only $9.95/month.  And because this is beta software, this hosting plan is month-to-month for maximum flexibility.  Be sure and visit our site for full details.

For more information on Visual Studio 2005, ASP.NET and FREE downloads
visit the  Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Site

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You might already know that you can use a shortcut URL for a page on your website if the page is named default.htm or index.htm.  The most obvious use is for your home page - instead of typing www.yoursite.com/index.htm visitors to your site can simply type www.yoursite.com and they will see your homepage.

Technically, this works throughout your site and can be a great advantage if you use it properly.  The trick is to remember that you can only have one default.htm or index.htm page in any folder on your site but you can have as many folders as you like.

Here's an example.  Let's assume a typical site with the following pages: "Home", "Order", and "Support".  Conventionally, the site  is very small (only 3 pages) so you or your web designer would probably put all three pages in the main folder of the site.  Like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/index.htm
http://www.yoursite.com/order.htm
http://www.yoursite.com/support.htm

Visitors can type a shortcut url of www.yoursite.com to reach your homepage, but to reach any of the other pages directly, they have to remember and type the full url.  So if they want to reach support directly, they have to type www.yoursite.com/support.htm

Now consider the following site structure and page names instead:

http://www.yoursite.com/index.htm
http://www.yoursite.com/order/index.htm
http://www.yoursite.com/support/index.htm
 

By creating subfolders called "order" and "support", the pages in those folders can each be named index.htm without any conflict.  This allows each page to be reached with a shortcut url.

To directly visit the order page, your customer can simply type www.yoursite.com/order or to reach support they can type www.yoursite.com/support

If you don't overuse this technique, and you use easy-to-remember folder names, then your clients can make an educated guess and navigate directly to the section on your site they want to reach.

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"How do I get listed with the search engines?" - This is one of the most frequently asked questions that we receive.  In the early days of the web, the brief answer was "submit your site to Yahoo and wait and wait and wait....".  Although site submission was free, each search engine had their own policies of how quickly they visited suggested sites and then how long it took before the site might appear in their directory.

Yahoo changed their policy a few years ago.  They simplified the process by no longer accepting free submissions for commercial/business sites.  Now the only option for commercial sites (anything other than personal or hobbyist sites) is to pay them a $299 annual fee and your site is reviewed within 7 days and usually (but there is no guarantee) included in their directory.

Originally called "Yahoo Express Submit" the program has been renamed "Yahoo! Directory Submit" and is located here.

Should you pay the fee and submit your site?  This is a decision only you can make but here's a few things to keep in mind:

If you do pay, your site will get reviewed quickly and most likely make it into the directory.  Although the directory is less widely used now than in the past (most searches on the Yahoo site are done via the search engine links and not the directory), being listed in the Yahoo directory can greatly help your site.

Since Google PageRank is based on the quantity and quality of incoming links to your site, if you have a new site or a site that is not scoring high in the search engines, paying $299 to get a high-quality, incoming link from Yahoo to your site may be very cost-effective and help improve your site ranking fairly quickly.

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90-days Free - Submit your site to 200 Search Engines: http://seo.voicegateway.com

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