A random .NET website tip (and an apology)

This is a really random one, but I wish I'd known this 48 hours ago - posting in case it ever comes in handy for you...and if any of you tried to access innshopper.com in the last two days I'm really sorry.

About once every 6 months my website will become inaccessible and return a 503 error.  I've had extended converations with my hosting provider but they have been unable to solve the issue. We know it has something to do with an .ASPX page getting locked up but can't replicate the problem.  Eventually it goes away and acts as if nothing was ever wrong.  My best guess it that eventually we hit one of the planned server/service restarts and that clears everything out.

So 48 hours ago this ugly problem came back...and again tech support can't fix it.  Then I stumbled upon this trick for forcing an ASP.NET application to shut down (even if your annoying hosting company won't acknowledge the need or process the request).

All you do is create a file called App_offline.htm and upload it to the root of your site.  As long as the file is there, ASP.NET shuts down and redirects all requests to that page.  When you delete the file, ASP.NET restarts.  I gave it a shot and "poof" - my website is back up and running.

Knowing this would have saved me two days of frustration, so I'm passing it along - I know a lot of you maintain your own sites.  And again, I apologize if the downtime caused any inconvenience.

Thanks,

Zach