After resolving all sorts of small bugs both in Shutdown Controller and my site, I have finally released Shutdown Controller v4.1 beta 1 (build 22 for those interested).

I won't go in to the details of the release here, as I have already done a write up of it on this post on my blog, which lists the changes and what you can expect.

You can download it from here or by opening the Shutdown Controller site and clicking Downloads.

I've managed to sort out a lingering bug in the installer which has caused the delay of Shutdown Controller beta 1 for a few months now. With this now resolved and a quick pass of testing conducted with a positive result, beta 1 is pretty much ready to go live.

Beta 1 will be posted alongside Shutdown Controller v4.0, so if you don't run Windows Vista, or you don't want to use beta software, then I recommend you stick to the released v4.0 build. If you have Windows Vista however, then I strongly recommend you download the v4.1 beta when it is released, especially if you use the Task Scheduler.

There's some small checks still required to do as well as some site changes to support the update which need to be done, but it should be live before the end of the week.

Sorry about the downtime, apparently there was some movement of the web server and the redirector wasn't setup correctly. Should be all good now.

I have completed migration of my site from my web server at home to a new, high speed link+server setup thanks to my good mates at WWWires.

Speeds should be much, much faster than previously on my home connection, as well as rendering of pages and any database connected stuff (which is a lot these days).
There's probably some other lingering problems due to how I had the site hardwired to the configuration on my server and the migration, but these hopefully will be sorted soon enough.

On another note, my uni exams are almost over, which means beta 1 of Shutdown Controller 4.1 within a fortnight as well as the final version of Yahtzee Mobile for Windows Mobile.

I have just uploaded a new version of this site with some substantial behind-the-scenes changes to how data is retrieved from the database.

Originally, I let ASP.NET do what it felt like in terms of creating connections and queries to the database, but as it became more and more complex, as well as other things I was doing at the time, the need for more of a business layer was introduced, forcing me to rewrite a good portion of the SQL into another assembly that handled this task exclusively.
As a result, some things may not work, though from my testing there shouldn't really be any issues, and the changes should really go unnoticed.

Another update was the revamping of my 'View Family' page. The family page allows me to group related files together. An example is the 'Shutdown Controller' family, which lists all files relating to Shutdown Controller. Programs that have more than one set of files available now have their download links updated to point to their family page instead of direct to file pages.

With this minor update now complete, I will soon be uploading the first beta for Shutdown Controller v4.1, as well as possibly the final build for Yahtzee Mobile. No ETA is available on this as I am entering the major assignment period, so free time becomes much, much less.