Orchard Hosted on WinHost

With so many ASP.NET Host Provider available competition has gotten really fierce. Prices as low as $5/mo - but the caveat stands with the statement: You get what you pay for.

I normally will point my customers to web hosting providers like DiscountASP but with a yearly price tag of nearly $200/yr it can get pretty pricey. Performance is great, response is at its best and the service is impeccable. However, it always comes back to price...

So I ventured out and did what any other frugal person would do and search for other providers. I did find WinHost and I hosted one of my domains on their servers. Everything seems pretty smooth until I began poking around the Orchard's Control Panel.

The symptom was that Orchard's Control Panel would log me off after a few clicks or if I waited more than 30 seconds before posting a change. After a few email with Winhost's Tech Support it turns out that Orchard uses more than 100MB of memory. One of WinHost's limitation is 100MB per app pool - it recycles it once it reaches that threshold... Along with other thresholds as well.

I ran into this discussion: http://orchard.codeplex.com/discussions/254458

which led to this article: http://orchardproject.net/docs/Setting-up-a-machine-key.ashx

Once I applied the fix everything was working just as expected. Keep in mind that the app pool will still recycle but at least it won't log you out of the system. This is great if all you have is simple or static content - in my case that's exactly what I have. So an occasional app recycle won't really hurt anything I'm hosting.

If you're hosting something more mission critical you may think about paying the higher price because sometimes getting what you pay isn't getting what you're paying for... :-)

Giving Back To Capoeira

At the ripe age of 40 I went to visit my doctor for my yearly check-up. The prognosis at the time was not good. Inheriting the many diseases that run in my family I was no special candidate that would be skipping the plague.

I remember the cold, dry words coming from my doctor as he spoke to me about my depleating health. The words sounded as if I was the 1 billionth person he's said this to - and for all intesive purposes I probably was. He says, "Well let see what these test results show us... hmmm... Ok! So you're pre-diabetic, you have high cholestoral, your blood pressure indicates that you have pre-hypertension and let's see here... Ok, we have to have more results because your liver results came back very abnormal due to the fatty liver condition you have. Here are some pamphlets for you to read. Hey, listen - if you simply exercise all these problems would go away."

Basically, I was walking towards a quick grave with plenty of banana peels to help slip in quickly and effortlessly.

Long story short, December 2009 I began training in Capoeira. Ya, it cost money to do the training, to buy the uniforms and participate in the fundraisers. I won't even begin with the time committment - and yes, it's a huge time committment. Every single penny spent since then can't begin to pay back for the healthy life I life today. I see people around me that continue to deplead in health and I think to my self, "I wish they would just exercise."

For that, I'm giving my time back to Capoeira. I've devoted a fair portion of my weekends to developing my Capoeira Professor's website: www.capoeirabrasilvalley.com

I hope you find it and most importantly I hope YOU begin exercising for a healthier life!