4 ms·

AppHarbor - Heroku-style hosting for asp.net

35 points by andrewdavey 16y ago

antimatter15 16y ago
I find it interesting that it's a git-enabled asp.net hosting service. I figured that git wasn't popular among the windows users.
- friism 16y ago
  We're working on Mercurial support too. There are loads of .NET and C# projects on github though: https://github.com/languages/C%23 https://github.com/languages/C%23
- angstrom 16y ago
  msysgit works just fine, both 32/64bit windows...however, I agree I'm not aware of many windows devs that use it. I tend to straddle win/*nix so I have git/svn installed in both environments for convenience.
trotsky 16y ago
Deploying .NET web apps can be kind of a hazzle hassle
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  Well, I think hazzle is a new term. It's when some is such a hassle it frozzles you, hence HAZZLE.
sachinag 16y ago
If you're going to submit your own app, here are some tips: 1) Link your homepage. HN allows you to title your submission and we'll forgive a teensy bit of valuable keyword stuffing in your submission if it's descriptive. Your homepage is always a more valuable landing page than a months-old blog post. If your homepage isn't as descriptive as the blog post, change your homepage then submit. 2) Either be at public launch or public beta when you do. Otherwise, you're blowing a chance to capture and on board a huge number of technically savvy people who will help you find bugs and UX issues in real time. (This was exceptionally helpful to us with Dawdle.com back when.) 3) Please make sure your blog has a big honking link to your homepage, not the blog homepage. Make that link an image with lots of tasty descriptive text to goose your SEO to your homepage, which will undoubtedly serve as your main landing page for normals who are Googling and press who wants to link to you.
- andrewdavey 16y ago
  It's not my app. I'm just came across AppHarbor yesterday and have been playing with it. The home page is very bare, so I linked to the blog to provide quicker access to info. I guess the guys have been too busy to get the home page ready yet. I'm sorry if I've damaged the marketing opportunities. I was just excited to see them handing out beta invites and wanted to spread the word :)
  - friism 16y ago
    No damage done, thanks for posting :-).
jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
You should also give them a try as they are a YC W11 company (it's good to support the community). http://mobile.twitter.com/friism/statuses/6544481205620736 http://mobile.twitter.com/friism/statuses/6544481205620736
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- PonyGumbo 16y ago
  I do. I love it.
- andrewdavey 16y ago
  I happen to like writing web apps using .NET. I came across AppHarbor yesterday, got a beta invite and started playing with it today. Yes it's very early, but I thought there might be people here who would find it interesting still.
- profquail 16y ago
  I do. The new ASP.NET MVC stuff is really nice, and I suppose the biggest draw for me is that I already use C#/F# on a daily basis, so using ASP.NET is just a matter of learning the API. If your only experience with ASP.NET was with the old, ASP.NET Forms-based stuff, I understand where you're coming from -- my first development job was writing ASP.NET Forms apps on .NET 1.1...it wasn't pretty, to say the least -- but you should really give the new ASP.NET MVC 2 (or 3, which is almost RTM) a look.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  A ton of companies have a lot of internal code written in c#.
tomjen3 16y ago
Interesting, but I doubt it will become that popular - lots of people use the cloud, lots of people use c# but the intersection isn't that high.
- friism 16y ago
  More than 35,000 startups are enrolled in Microsoft BizSpark (http://www.bizspark.com/About/Pages/Overview.aspx http://www.bizspark.com/About/Pages/Overview.aspx). Some of them are likely to be interested in web-hosting with simplified deployment. Also, Microsoft is building a PaaS (Windows Azure: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/ http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/) which suggests that they think there is a market. Disclaimer, I'm an AppHarbor co-founder.
  - atoast3000 16y ago
    I'm very interested in your project. Do you use Azure as backend or a custom server provisioning system (server core + iis 7 + a sql server hotel)?
    - smhinsey 16y ago
      I have no affiliation with AppHarbor, but I do know a lot about Azure. I don't think it's really the best choice for running a platform like this, so I doubt they are using it. It's more of a greenfield platform because while you certainly can run legacy apps on it, in order to fully take advantage of the platform you have to design for it. For example. SQL Azure is a subset of what SQL Server 2008 R2 offers, so while if you use something like NHibernate, your app's data access code may still work, you may find that you have a reporting query that uses a specialized T-SQL feature it doesn't work.
    - friism 16y ago
      Right now we run on top of Amazon EC2 Windows Instances.
- runesoerensen 16y ago
  Our goal is to make people c# developers use the cloud. I do agree that a lot of c# developers doesn't use the cloud yet, but I don't see how that should keep Appharbor from becoming popular. A more likely cause for the lack of cloud-hosted c# apps would probably be, that there aren't really any viable options for c# developers who wants their app hosted in the cloud (Azure isn't really the bee's knees, right?)
twymer 16y ago
They should probably put some work into their homepage..

35 points by andrewdavey 16y ago

I find it interesting that it's a git-enabled asp.net hosting service. I figured that git wasn't popular among the windows users.

friism 16y ago
We're working on Mercurial support too. There are loads of .NET and C# projects on github though: https://github.com/languages/C%23 https://github.com/languages/C%23
angstrom 16y ago
msysgit works just fine, both 32/64bit windows...however, I agree I'm not aware of many windows devs that use it. I tend to straddle win/*nix so I have git/svn installed in both environments for convenience.

trotsky 16y ago

Deploying .NET web apps can be kind of a hazzle hassle

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
Well, I think hazzle is a new term. It's when some is such a hassle it frozzles you, hence HAZZLE.

sachinag 16y ago

If you're going to submit your own app, here are some tips: 1) Link your homepage. HN allows you to title your submission and we'll forgive a teensy bit of valuable keyword stuffing in your submission if it's descriptive. Your homepage is always a more valuable landing page than a months-old blog post. If your homepage isn't as descriptive as the blog post, change your homepage then submit. 2) Either be at public launch or public beta when you do. Otherwise, you're blowing a chance to capture and on board a huge number of technically savvy people who will help you find bugs and UX issues in real time. (This was exceptionally helpful to us with Dawdle.com back when.) 3) Please make sure your blog has a big honking link to your homepage, not the blog homepage. Make that link an image with lots of tasty descriptive text to goose your SEO to your homepage, which will undoubtedly serve as your main landing page for normals who are Googling and press who wants to link to you.

andrewdavey 16y ago
It's not my app. I'm just came across AppHarbor yesterday and have been playing with it. The home page is very bare, so I linked to the blog to provide quicker access to info. I guess the guys have been too busy to get the home page ready yet. I'm sorry if I've damaged the marketing opportunities. I was just excited to see them handing out beta invites and wanted to spread the word :)
- friism 16y ago
  No damage done, thanks for posting :-).

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago

You should also give them a try as they are a YC W11 company (it's good to support the community). http://mobile.twitter.com/friism/statuses/6544481205620736 http://mobile.twitter.com/friism/statuses/6544481205620736

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

PonyGumbo 16y ago
I do. I love it.
andrewdavey 16y ago
I happen to like writing web apps using .NET. I came across AppHarbor yesterday, got a beta invite and started playing with it today. Yes it's very early, but I thought there might be people here who would find it interesting still.
profquail 16y ago
I do. The new ASP.NET MVC stuff is really nice, and I suppose the biggest draw for me is that I already use C#/F# on a daily basis, so using ASP.NET is just a matter of learning the API. If your only experience with ASP.NET was with the old, ASP.NET Forms-based stuff, I understand where you're coming from -- my first development job was writing ASP.NET Forms apps on .NET 1.1...it wasn't pretty, to say the least -- but you should really give the new ASP.NET MVC 2 (or 3, which is almost RTM) a look.
tomjen3 16y ago
A ton of companies have a lot of internal code written in c#.

tomjen3 16y ago

Interesting, but I doubt it will become that popular - lots of people use the cloud, lots of people use c# but the intersection isn't that high.

friism 16y ago
More than 35,000 startups are enrolled in Microsoft BizSpark (http://www.bizspark.com/About/Pages/Overview.aspx http://www.bizspark.com/About/Pages/Overview.aspx). Some of them are likely to be interested in web-hosting with simplified deployment. Also, Microsoft is building a PaaS (Windows Azure: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/ http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/) which suggests that they think there is a market. Disclaimer, I'm an AppHarbor co-founder.
- atoast3000 16y ago
  I'm very interested in your project. Do you use Azure as backend or a custom server provisioning system (server core + iis 7 + a sql server hotel)?
  - smhinsey 16y ago
    I have no affiliation with AppHarbor, but I do know a lot about Azure. I don't think it's really the best choice for running a platform like this, so I doubt they are using it. It's more of a greenfield platform because while you certainly can run legacy apps on it, in order to fully take advantage of the platform you have to design for it. For example. SQL Azure is a subset of what SQL Server 2008 R2 offers, so while if you use something like NHibernate, your app's data access code may still work, you may find that you have a reporting query that uses a specialized T-SQL feature it doesn't work.
  - friism 16y ago
    Right now we run on top of Amazon EC2 Windows Instances.
runesoerensen 16y ago
Our goal is to make people c# developers use the cloud. I do agree that a lot of c# developers doesn't use the cloud yet, but I don't see how that should keep Appharbor from becoming popular. A more likely cause for the lack of cloud-hosted c# apps would probably be, that there aren't really any viable options for c# developers who wants their app hosted in the cloud (Azure isn't really the bee's knees, right?)

twymer 16y ago

They should probably put some work into their homepage..