WebMatrix: a new opportunity for Web Hosting providers

A couple of months ago Microsoft announced the availability of the new Web Hosting Gallery: a marketplace where you (Web Hosting providers) can engage with developers at the right time with the right offering and get this opportunity at no cost. For more information on how to get your offer online, have a look at the following FAQ.

One of the important things you have to know is that the gallery highlights offers from those Web Hosting companies, which offer the latest Microsoft stack, so if you support the latest Microsoft stack, your offer will be more visible (these offers are market as “spotlight” offers and appear on the top part of the Web Hosting Gallery).

Now, two weeks ago at TechEd Europe, Microsoft announced the availability of Web Matrix Beta3. With simple words WebMatrix is a task-focused tool that is designed to make it really easy to get started with web development. It minimizes the number of concepts someone needs to learn in order to get simple things done, and includes and integrates all of the pieces necessary to quickly build Web sites (with just one single download you get in few minutes a simple but complete development environment ready).

When you create a web site using WebMatrix you can do it in 2 ways: starting from scratch or using one of the popular open-source applications (ASP.NET and PHP) that you can easily customize and then deploy using WebMatrix.

One of the goals of WebMatrix is to make the deployment experience as easier as possible: for the user the deployment process must be straightforward with no pain. If the user doesn’t have a hosting provider, then WebMatrix can recommend one with right technology for his site. So here you have once again another opportunity. In fact, by being WebMatrix compatible you get maximum visibility (not only within the Web Hosting Gallery) but within the WebMatrix “Find Web Hosting…” dialog as well.

What you have to do in order to join the Web Application Gallery with WebMatrix support?

Here you can find step by step instructions in order to get your offer within WebMatrix.

The process described in the document can be summarized in the following way:

1. The hoster get an offer up on the Hosting Gallery (https://www.microsoft.com/web/hosting/home), with Spotlight requirements (by following the guidelines mentioned above you automatically fulfill the Spotlight requirements). Note that many of the web applications that can be customized/published using WebMatrix have PHP/MySQL components as requirements. To ensure that you are able to support also those applications, you have to install also the PHP/MySQL components (which sometimes are mentioned as optional in the documentation)
   As you apply, you will need to provide a test account to the WebMatrix team using the Profile XML form
2. Microsoft runs tests to publish x web apps (PHP ones and ASP.NET ones) in the App Gallery (for instance Wordpress/Drupal/DotNetNuke/etc) to that account, and make sure they run.
3. Afterwards, if all goes well, we mark your offer in the hosting gallery database as “WebMatrix compatible”. This means that when a user click on the Find Web Hosting… menu item within WebMatrix, your offer will appear. By having a Spotlight badge WebMatrix compatible offer, you get more visibility.

"Spotlight" offers from Swiss Hosting Providers like Iway AG and Webland AG (WebMatrix launch partners) can be found at https://www.microsoft.com/web/Hosting