Windows Home Server was designed to “grow with you”. That may be obvious when it comes to adding additional hard drives but also includes the option to install extra software features to help customize your Home Server. The development community has created “add-ins” for Windows Home Server that extends its capabilities in fun, exciting, and useful ways. There are currently over 100 add-ins available for download.
Three widely popular add-ins that are being used today include: Lights-Out, WebGuide, and Whiist.
Lights-Out
This power management add-in is used to put your Windows Home Server in a hibernated mode when you are not using it. This is a great way to cut down on energy bills and make your home or office a little “greener”.
*Windows Home Server console screen shot of Lights-Out add-in
This add-in allows your Home Server to go into hibernation mode when users are not using it, based on your calendar of events, or a combination of both. You will also have the option to set a defined time in which the Home Server will fully turn back on. Windows Home Server will never remain asleep if you have a backup scheduled. Therefore, all of your important data will remain safe and still be automatically backed up.
WebGuide
WebGuide allows you to remotely view live and recorded TV programs while you are away from home. It will also enable you to remotely schedule and manage your recorded television programs, music, pictures and videos on your Windows XP Media Center edition or Windows Vista Premium, or Windows Vista Ultimate PC.
*Screen shot of Windows Home Server’s add-in, WebGuide
*Screen shot of streaming videos through Windows Home Server’s add-in, WebGuide
WebGuide provides you with mobile access to your music and videos from your Windows Mobile devices. This means you can have access to all of your pictures and movies while you are on the road.
Whiist
Whiist is a Windows Home Server add-in that allows you to create and manage web content on your Windows Home Server. Once downloaded, Whiist can be used through your Windows Home Server console. This tab makes it so that you can easily create and manage new websites, photo albums, and homepage links.
*Screen shot of Windows Home Server console with the Whiist add-in
Some of the key features that are found in Whiist include:
You have now seen three out of many Windows Home Server add-ins. If you are interested in learning about all of the other available add-ins to download, you can visit: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/add-ins.mspx.
-Nicole
I have a lot of love for whiist -- I even managed to shoehorn MySQL and PHP on top of it: jrrver.homeserver.com/.../blog (it's a little slow sometimes, but it will load.)
Of course, in the process I managed to break my WHS management site... heh. Oh well -- that's all the fun, right? :)
Great post! Great add-ins. I didn't realize something like WebGuide was out there, but now I want to play with it.
And don't forget autoexit from asoft (www.whsplus.com/.../autoexit-200-for-windows-home-server or www.asoft.be)
and whs diskmgt www.whsplus.com/.../windows-home-server-disk-management which are two of the top ten add-ins.
Are there any plans to allow Webguide functionality for Windows 7 clients?
Dragonwyntir - If you are interested in WebGuide's capabilities but are using Windows 7, you should take a look at the new features which includes Remote Media Streaming: windows.microsoft.com/.../remote-media-streaming
Remote MEdia Streaming doesn't do what Dragonwyntir
was asking, and I'm of the same opinion; you really need WebGuide (or any web based support for viewing and modifying the schedule) support for Windows 7 MCE clients. I upgraded my MCE box, and while MCE is much better, I've lost one of the best features, which was WebGuide; I'm not interested in remote streaming, what I and many people need, is web based access to the schedule. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1) I don't have to walk downstairs, switch the TV on, etc; I can just hit access WebGuide from my main machine.
2) WebGuide showed more channels at once, making it far more efefctive for viewing the schedule and setting recordings, than the guide in MCE itself.
Whether you support a WebGuide type system directly on Win7 (and it's only the Win7 guide format change that has stopped the existing product working) or via WHS, I don't mind, although I suspect many WebGuide users don't have WHS. Effectively what you've done with Win 7 is broken one of the most popular add-ons to MCE.
I believe the WebGuide author now works for MS, so go and prod him in the back and keep prodding him until he releases a new version 8)
Dragonwyntir and Dave - I reached out to the WebGuide author and he noted that this topic is very important to him as well. He reccommended to check his website closer to Windows 7 GA as this will be the place where any announcements will be made: asciiexpress.com/webguide
Nicole,
Thank you for checking into this; I, like most Microsoft fans, believe that the integration of your products is where your success will truly be manifested, and this "last 10%" sort of cleanup is what we all look for as we attempt to become increasingly dependent on your ecosystem of products.
Cheers,
Tim
Web guide will be really very helpful for us because I have little idea about Windows Home Server.thanks for providing such a great information.
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It was nice going through it. keep it up the good work.
–thanks–
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Hmm interesting thoughts. Nice to see some "movement" in this direction.
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