flat file blog engine powered by asp.net - asp.net

Regarding blog engines, are there any blog engines that meet all of the following criteria?
exists in the asp.net ecosystem
flat file
option to edit files as raw html (not markdown)
actively maintained project
I have come across AtomSite and DasBlog, but these projects do not
seem particularly active.

The number of options in ASP.NET seems limited, and the closest option I have come across so far is BlogEngine.NET.
Update 4/16/2014
MiniBlog could be the way to go. (Hanselman writes about it here.)

Related

The "correct" way of using multilingual support

I just began working with ASP.NET and I'm trying to bring with me some coding standards I find healthy. Among such standards there is the multilingual support and the use of resources for easily handling future changes.
Back when I used to code desktop applications, every text had to be translated, so it was a common practice to have the language files for every languages I would want to offer to the customers. In those files I would map every single text, from button labels to error messages. In ASP.NET, with the help of Visual Studio, I have the resort of using the IDE to generate such Resource Files (from Tools -> Generate Local Resource), but then I would have to fill my webpages with labels - at least that is what I've learned from articles and tutorials. However, such approach looks a bit odd and I'm tempted to guess it doesn't smell that good as well. Now to the question:
Should I keep every single text in my website as labels and manage its contents in the resource files? It looks/feels odd especially when considering a text with several paragraphs.
Whenever I add/remove something, e.g.: a button, to an aspx file I would have to add it to the resource file as well, because generating the resource file again would simply override all my previous changes to it. That doesn't feel like a reusable code at all for me.
Perhaps I got it all wrong from tutorials as it doesn't seem like a standardized matter - specially if it required recompiling the entire application whenever some change has to be done.
Best practices for ASP.NET Web Forms localization have not really changed much over the years. If you don't have much dynamic content then you can get away with implicit localization and bind web forms controls (form elements and yes, even labels) to resource files. Explicit localization is useful if you want a bit more control over where localized text is rendered in a control with multiple captions or something you've created yourself. You don't need to look very far for instructional steps from MS on how to do either of these.
Walkthrough: Using Resources for Localization with ASP.NET
If your localization requirements are more dynamic, for example, you want to easily provision new languages, centralize resources, or you need to provision new string captions on a new dimension (like per client), then you need to get a bit more creative. .NET allows you to extend the
the resource provider and you can implement a database backend that allows for easy administration of localized resources.
Extending the ASP.NET 2.0 Resource-Provider Model, Building a Database Resource Provider
Extending Resource-Provider for storing resources in the database * A more recent implementation
Or you could just roll your own!
I've also dug up a duplicate SO post. It's a few years old, but speaking from experience I believe the advice found on the referenced code project page are still true (for Web Forms): Globalization and localization demystified in ASP.NET 2.0
I hope that helps! If you have any more specific questions regarding localization please add them to your Questions or comments.

Multiblog engine for asp.net

I know, different forms of this questions were asked on this site multiple times, but I haven't seen a single answer that would satisfy my need.
I need a ASP.NET based blogging engine that wouul use SQL Server as a back end and allow multiple independet blogs in one app instance. I'm writing a community website for major bank and blogging is the piece I'm not sure about.
Answers to other questions include a broad spectrum from BlogEngine.NET (doesn't support multiple blogs) to CommunityServer (a beast! blogging is just asmall piece of it). I don't want to install a full-blown CRM and just use blogging, I want a blogging engine. I don't mind to buy a commercial one but I can't find one.
I'm pretty much stuck, and any ideas are highly appreciated!
I would consider Oxite if you are confident in your markup and knowledge of html. Also, you can extend it with html editors to unsure better markup. I personally love how flexible the framework is.
Here is the Oxite website with more info. BTW, it was used to build MIX online for Microsoft.

iweb and mobile me for a group content management system versus open source CMS

I work at a non profit and we are looking for a web solution to do the following:
External facing web site
Internal posting board for news, updates, pictures
Entitlements around user content
One of the folks at the non profit is a mac person and suggests using iweb and mobileme for this functionality. i have no expereince with these tools but it seems like the following are more appropriate:
TikiWiki: http://info.tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php
Drupal: http://drupal.org/
Joomla: http://www.joomla.org/about-joomla.html
i am a windows dot net guys so i also would prefer some asp.net solution here but i want to avoid getting religious here as any solution that does the job should be fine.
my question is, are there any thing to be concerned about with using the iWeb and mobileme solutions or any brick walls we are going to run into.
Also, are there PC based solution that will allow you to use these tools or does everyone need a mac?
This is only a partial answer to a multi-part question, but:
Drupal and Joomla are platform-independent. The software itself runs on PHP (presumably on a server, rather than a workstation), but you interact with the systems via a web interface. Drupal in particular lets you choose from many different editing options, via it's Wysiwyg module.
Personally, I think Drupal is an outstanding choice for nonprofit org (this being my own background) that have tech-skilled staff, and Joomla is an outstanding fit for nonprofits that don't have much in-house web expertise.
As for iWeb and MobileMe:
Compare them to Adobe Contribute. They're good software for what they do, but building organizational websites is not what they do.
What you've got is basically a souped-up MS Word that writes W3C compliant HTML. Things like members-only content, interactivity, etc are going to be pretty difficult to manage, and you'll be looking for another solution soon anyway if your site gets larger than a few dozen pages.
In short - avoid iWeb and MobileMe for this type of implementation. You may have a "Mac person" in the office (for now), but these products are designed more for individual/home use and not businesses/organizations. Eventually you'll run into any number of "brick walls".
A few other options (amongst many) if you don't have a web-designer on staff and want a hosted solution would be to look at Wordpress or Squarespace.
Thanks

Best way to create a sitesearch in ASP.NET

Which is the best way to create a site search engine for a dynamic asp.net site with hundreds of dynamic pages. I have seen many products and articles
http://www.karamasoft.com/UltimateSearch/overview.aspx
http://www.sitesearchasp.net
http://www.easysearchasp.net/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163355.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/asp/indexserver.aspx
Priyan,
Another high-quality open-source option would be the .NET port of Lucene
CodeProject - Introducing Lucene
dotlucene
lucene.net
You haven't mentioned Google's SiteSearch "product". Is one of your requirements that you'd like to host the search engine/catalog yourself?
Microsoft also has a product Search Server 2008 Express although I'm not sure if you can install it on any hosting provider.
And (disclaimer: I am the author) there is also a very basic open source project on CodeProject called Searcharoo (also at searcharoo.net). It is really meant as a 'demonstration/learning experience' - hence the six how to articles - but it might suffice for a small dynamic site.
I have used SQL Server Full Text Search for some projects - works well but it's really just searching database content, not a combination of static and dynamic Html/Pdf/Word/Jpg etc documents which a "real" web crawler will do.

Web-based .resx file editor?

I'm working on a SharePoint site, and the site eventually needs to be localized to many different languages. We can use resource files, but we'd like for the translators to be able to update those files while the site is live, without requiring developer assistance to recompile, redeploy, etc.
To me, I think the easiest way to do this would be to provide a web application to edit the .resx files as they sit in the App_GlobalResources directory. Does anyone know of some sort of a web-based .resx editor like that? I found one from LavaBlast, but it displays the values for all languages at once. With the number of languages we plan on having, I think that would eventually get unwieldy.
Any suggestions are appreciated.
I used the one you found: http://blog.lavablast.com/post/2008/02/RESX-file-Web-Editor.aspx It took a couple of hours but it works a treat. I think that having the multiple languages editable at the same time is very helpful to avoid getting your resx files out of sync, and to see blank entries easily.
Not a direct solution, but DotNetNuke contains a full lanaguage file editor, you might be able to extract the logic from it for your own use.
Microsoft released a tool called the Enterprise Localization Toolkit you might look at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479334.aspx
It has been ages since I played with it, but it should fit at least some of your requirements. It is easy enough for a non-techie to use. You do not edit RESX directly, however, so it might not be exactly what you need. You gen them instead and then deploy.

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