Greetings, I currently have a Silverlight site hosted with you. But I want to know how can I also host a Word Press site as a backup when Silverlight is not supported by the persons device or browser? I want it to auto-detect that Silverlight is not supported and then automatically divert to the Word Press site. But I need it to still be under the same domian name of nextgensoftware.co.uk. I see you support Word Press, so I am hoping this is possible somehow? Many thanks, David Ellams BSc(Hons) Founder & Managing Director NextGen Software Ltd
DASP enables customers to create many web applications in a single hosted account via the web application tool in the control panel (see kb articles 160 & 321 for further info). Mutliple web applications in a single hosting account all share the same IIS app pool therefore all share the same app pool recycle policy. For the scenario you've described, I'd follow a path that goes something like: First consider whether the SL app or the WP app is going to be at the root of the hosted account Depending on the decision at step (1), align the web applications accordingly e.g. if you decided you wanted your SL app at the root and the WP app as a child web application, you'd install WordPress in a new web application off your web root called something like /wp. This is going to be the path of least resistance and will mean you won't need url rewriting if you're aiming for a url that looks like nextgensoftware.co.uk/wp for the WP site Test the WP app alongside the existing SL app When you're happy with the way things are setup and your WP site is ready for go live, implement an intelligent auto-redirect mechanism from the SL app to the WP app For (4) there are a few ways to do this. You didn't mention which version of SL your app has been developed in but regardless of that, SL detection and redirection will always be performed client side. With that in mind you might find this useful: http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlightjs (it's supposed to be fully documented here but the documentation is a bit shoddy TBH). silverlight.js is a SL version agnostic JS resource and provides a method to enable detection of the SL plugin on the client (ref the Silverlight.isInstalled function). Finally when this SL / WP mash up is all setup and working in parallel, I'd record metrics about how many users are using the SL site and how many are using the WP site. This data will enable a decision to be made about when to retire Silverlight, which went it happens would be a wise move because Microsoft has completely ditched SL moving the technology into legacy status and has banished SL internally into the unwanted and unspoken naughty word bin
Thanks for your response, thats pretty much what I had in mind. But the only issue is will WP work with IIS? Will it just install as it is? It took me months and months to develop the SL site, don't want to just throw it away, it will probably just become a good demo site of what we can do in XAML since SL has simply evolved into Windows Phone and Windows 8, XAML lives on, horay!
Yes it really does work! The nice DASP guys have even included WP in the Web Application Gallery to enable a completely automated install (as long as this is the version you want / need). I've had WordPress successfully running on the DASP server in the past and nowadays I have a Joomla site running on there. PHP is pre-installed on the web servers so even a hands on manual WP install and setup is reasonably pain free. You do need a database of sorts - I believe there's a way to get WP running on SQL Server but I've never tried that; I've always used a MySQL db for WP and Joomla here.
I have. My advice is if you value your sanity, don't even try it. You have to alter a lot of the WordPress files and database queries, and while it's certainly doable - as an exercise - I can only imagine that maintenance would be a nightmare (WordPress is updated often). Put the square peg in the square hole brothers and sisters! Use MySQL for WordPress.
I hear you loud and clear. I for one won't be going down that route any time soon. Experience is everything and I find listening to / learning from other peoples' unfortunate IT experiences along with a healthy dose of common sense usually helps me go in the right direction. I suppose I only mentioned it as a possibility because whilst typing, I had in the back of my mind that existing DASP customers might have a SQL Server db provisioned but no MySQL db. This could still be the case but marrying WP and SQL Server on the strength of available platforms alone doesn't make it a good technical decision so I take it back. As an aside hand cranking PHP wasn't what I had in mind when I mentioned it but I think I'll just leave it there and let it die as it deserves to..
