The Road Ahead

You can now check the status of our services and websites using the new Service Status page. This displays realtime status information taken from our monitoring systems.

https://status.calzadamedia.com/

In addition to displaying the individual statuses, this page will also display the uptime for each service or website.

We do perform regular maintenance work, and this may involve some periods of downtime. Announcements of maintenance work and any ongoing issues may be found on our blog and Twitter feed.

Edited: 2nd October 2015 to fix broken links.

In the last few days we've upgraded our free URL shortening service LeafURL. As before, LeafURL is completely free to use, and if you register for an account, you are able to manage and monitor the performance of your shortened URLs.

In the next couple of months we will be enhancing LeafURL with improved and enhanced reporting and management capabilities for registered users. If you have any suggestion or ideas, get in touch.

Everything comes to an end, and after 12 years Microsoft will cease support for Windows XP on 8th April 2014. At first glance, this might not seem important. Computers running Windows XP will not magically cease to work on the 8th, but they will become progressively more vulnerable to attack and security breaches as Microsoft will no longer release security updates and patches.

If you are still using Windows XP, you now have less than a month to upgrade or replace your operating system.

Before purchasing the latest version of Windows, compare the system requirements of Windows 8.1 with that of your computer. Computer hardware has changed significantly in the past 12 years and upgrading to Windows 8.1 may not be possible with your current hardware.

If a Windows upgrade is not a viable proposition, then there are alternatives. One common route is switching from Windows to Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu is free to download and install and unless you absolutely require Windows or Microsoft Office, it is a reliable alternative that includes the LibreOffice Suite. A guide on how to migrate from Windows to Ubuntu may be found in this month's PcPro magazine.

After 8th April, we will only offer support for customers still using Windows XP on a case-by-case basis.

Microsoft .NET Framework v4.5 is now available for all web hosting packages. Existing customers may use the framework by updating the compilation tag in your ASP.Net application's web.config to something like:

The Hosting Control Panel may not show ASP.Net 4.5 as a selectable framework within the Website Properties page. As long as you set the selected ASP.Net framework to version 4.0 and use the compilation tag described above, your application should use the new framework.

We do still support .Net Framework v1 albeit on a case-by-case basis. If you wish to use .NET Framework 1, please contact support for assistance.

If you require any additional information or have a question, please please contact support for assistance.

Microsoft Exchange 2013 is now the default messaging service for new customers. With Hosted Exchange 2013, you get the latest technology, a better way to share email, calendars and contact information and easier mailbox setup.

For existing customers, we can still add Exchange 2010 mailbox now and into the foreseeable future.