The .NET beast unleashed
About this site
Welcome to our new site. There are many new changes that have been made from our previous site that was under the name News Whistler (softwareclass.com). As you may noticed we got new domain name that reflects the new site name. But be assured we will still have same kind of contents. The site is hosted on new server that is much more resalable and powerful than the pervious host. The entire site was rewritten in ASP.NET and hence you should notice improvements in page loading thanks to caching. Also I have added more contents on the front page. You will see articles directly from MSDN web site, and latest downloads (trial versions of games and applications, patches, etc...) from Microsoft. Also there is "More News Links" section that will allow me to post quick links to more contents.
But what I am most proud of is .NET. I have been working with .NET since beta 2, and as you may heard from others it is simply amazing. So far the development that I have done for the new WinInsider.com was focusing on migrating the ASP 3.0 functionality to ASP.NET. The second phase, which I already started, will be harvesting more power of .NET and create more features and services for the new site. For instance, NetAgent 2.5 will be based on XML Web Services. And there will be more of web services for other features as well, but for now hash, hash.
So we are first again. We had first great forum design, first to offer access to news for mobile users with PocketPC or Palm, first to have integrated news notification service. And now again for the first to create news site with .NET. So WinInsider.com not only deliver great news about latest technology, but knows the technology inside out first hand.
updated .NET/Site Update Report
Bit over one month has passed since launch of this new site, and overall transition has been smooth
considering the large migration undertake to .NET and logistical move of a site with a size such as
ours to new location. The new server seems to be doing very well. Even in the short time since the
site move two new features have emerged: XP look-and-feel forum and Chat. These two latest additions
are attempts to ignite bit more social activity on this site. Also in past month I been making small
enhancements to the server code and fixing few errors here and there (one which prevented in some
circumstances messages from being posted to the forum). I appreciate the emails notifying me about
such problems, as you can imagine that running entire site by yourself it is hard to foresee and test
all the different variations of using the different features that this site has to offer. Hence from
this point forward the entire site should be running mush smoothly then ever before.