I’ve used dasBlog since I first began hosting my own blog and previously considered a move to BlogEngine.NET (BE) but the URL’s aren’t compatible so there remains some investigation to figure out the best mechanism prior to switching. Unfortunately, dasblog seems to be on it’s final legs so spending time there at this point doesn’t seem wise.

To that end, I’ve been investigating various issues involved in a switch and in an attempt to make a transition easier I’ve created a BE provider which reads/writes blog posts and comments using dasBlog’s IBlogDataService rather than BE’s own XML provider. Basically, I’ve replace one XML provider with another, actually that’s not entirely true as this new provide is a descendant of XmlBlogProvider included with BE. Using this approach I avoid having to constantly re-import my blog data as I look into solving the URL issues.

I’ve made the code available via SVN on Google Code here so feel free to grab it and give it a go. I chose Google Code over Codeplex because the latter doesn’t want abandoned projects and I don’t see this as an ongoing project as it’s scope is quite narrow. What I’m interested in is any feedback regarding issues using the code and taking this sort of approach. In my initial playing around with BE it seems to function properly and allows me to use the “slug” feature of BE to “fix” at least part of the URL problem by simply removing spaces from Titles rather than replacing then with dashes.

Things I’ve tested (manually)

• Adding/Editing/Deleting posts
• Adding/Editing/Deleting comments

I haven’t played with images or attachments though my blog data seems to render fairly well. I can see some limitations such as no support for threaded comments though I don’t view this as a long term solution but I think it’s a step in the right direction.

Things that need testing/implementation:

• DateTime conversions from dasBlog to BE
• Image uploads
• Windows Live support

Btw, I’m looking for help with the problem of retaining my existing URLs so if you’re a dasblog user and potentially interested in switching ping me and perhaps we can collaborate.

Btw, I have a link blog in case you’re interested.

The other day I blogged about potentially switching to blogengine.net but one of the major issues is ensuring the URL’s I have in dasBlog either continue to work or redirect accordingly. To that end, I started investigating URL rewriters for ASP.NET and found this post of ScottGu’s very helpful. He mentioned two different Open Source rewriters and I opted for UrlRewriter.net which describes itself as:

UrlRewriter.NET is an open-source, light-weight, highly configurable URL rewriting component for ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0. UrlRewriter.NET provides similar IIS Rewrite capabilities that the Apache web server provides with mod_rewrite and .htaccess. You don’t need to install an ISAPI Rewrite filter to use the component. Best of all, UrlRewriter.NET is free and licensed with a very permissive MIT-style licence.

I found it to be all of the above and the install/configuration to be very straightforward not to mention it has good online help and a support forum.

One caveat that I ran into though was that once installed at the root I started seeing this error in my other ASP.NET applications:

Server Error in '/blog' Application.

---

Configuration Error

Description: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.

Parser Error Message: Could not load file or assembly 'Intelligencia.UrlRewriter' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. (E:\web\xxxxxxx\htdocs\web.config line 11)

Source Error:

Line 9:    <system.web>
Line 10:     <httpModules>
Line 11:       <add name="UrlRewriter" type="Intelligencia.UrlRewriter.RewriterHttpModule, 
                     Intelligencia.UrlRewriter" />
Line 12:     </httpModules>
Line 13:   </system.web>

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.1433; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.1433

The Fix

To fix this I added the following to the web.config files of my other ASP.NET applications removing the new assembly dependency:

1 <system.web>
2     <httpModules>
3         <remove name="UrlRewriter" />
4     </httpModules>
5 </system.web>

If you’re aware of other options that don’t require changes to every web.config I’d love to hear about them. At any rate, while I haven’t decided to switch blog engines yet I now have the pieces in place to do just that.

I started blogging June of 2004 on Borland's blog server which eventually morphed into CodeGear blogs. In October of 2006 I decided to "go it alone on stevetrefethen.com and shortly thereafter started using FeedBurner to track subscribers. Here’s a graph of subscriber count:

Here’s a graph of the matching Google Analytics over the same period:

In early 2007, there was a bunch of activity surrounding Borland’s CodeGear announcement not to mention I was featured on CodeGear’s home page for awhile.

Lastly, what would a post like this be without the obligatory call to action...

If you haven’t already, Subscribe now!  :-)

* - Btw, I fully grok the fact that FeedBurner’s count may not be entirely accurate but it’s a fairly standard metric widely used on blogs so I’ll take it.

One of the things I like about blogging is looking through the various search terms  people used which lead them to my blog. For example, I just noticed this page from the University of Washington which links to my post on testing ASP.NET applications using Selenium. That’s pretty cool. dasBlog has an Activities page that lists Referrer Urls which is where I found the above link.

On the same page is a list of Internet Search results where I can see what keywords people, mostly from Google, used to find my content. The keywords link back to the original search page so I can click through and view where my content ended up in the search results as well as see other related content. Here is what that list looks like on the admin pages of my blog:

For example, take the search results for  "setting up delphi build machine". I can see my post was in the top five.

 
Granted, for people who already blog this isn’t likely to be all that exciting as many blog engines includes such features however, I do think it’s interesting to see how other people search for content.

One last point, I find it more than a little spooky how completely Google controls search. I’d guess Google accounts for all but a few percent of Internet searches on my blog which means they could effectively shut my blog down.

MyBrand lets you use your own domain name to host your feed instead of feeds.feedburner.com. It puts you in even greater control of your own content with FeedBurner and best of all, MyBrand is now free.

Below I outline the steps to get this setup on DiscountASP.NET (my hosting provider) but you should be able to do the same sort of thing on your host if you control your DNS settings.

1. Login to your DiscountASP.NET account
2. From the control panel under Tools & Utilities, select DNS Manager
3. After reading, click "I Understand and Agree" on the warning page 
4. Click the link to select the domain you wish to modify, in my case stevetrefethen.com
5. In the CNAME Record Manager section click "New"
6. Under the Domain Name column enter the prefix you wish to use for your domain's feeds. I used "feeds"
7. Under the Destination column enter feeds.feedburner.com
8. Click "add"

Be aware that changes to CNAME records may take some time to propagate so you may want to wait a day before trying to access your new URL. In fact, I've done this and have updated my RSS feeds to use my own domain name. Don't worry, if you're already subscribed you don't have to change anything as the old FeedBurner URL will continue to work.