*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

This weekend I spent some time investigating two of the top blog packages: SubText and DasBlog in preparing for a new site I launched (http://www.keithelder.net).  I’ve heard of each app equally it seems and each seem to be the top two players in the .Net blog space.  After downloading both of them and poking around the source and trying to get them to build I am no where further along in my evaluation this evening than I was when I started. 

DasBlog Installation Stumps Me

For starters DasBlog is still using VS2003 for its solution.  For me, this was a huge turn off right out of the gate.   I had to configure lots more out of the box to get DasBlog configured.  Ultimately I had something configured improperly with IIS and kept getting this error:

Server Error in ‘/’ 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: It is an error to use a section registered as allowDefinition=’MachineToApplication’ beyond application level.  This error can be caused by a virtual directory not being configured as an application in IIS.
Source Error:

Line 109:        <!-- <httpCookies httpOnlyCookies="false"/> -->
Line 110:        
Line 111:        <authentication mode="Forms">
Line 112:			<!-- NOTE: If you want to run MULTIPLE dasBlogs on the SAME Domain Name
Line 113:			     include the path in each blog's Web.Config like path="/dasblog1" and path="/yoursite"

Source File: C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\DasBlog\source\newtelligence.DasBlog.Web\web.config    Line: 111

After a stint of digging around and trying to trouble shoot things I gave up and decided to try to get SubText going.  I honestly don’t care which one I wind up with but I ultimately want to use one that I can contribute too. 

SubText Installation Stumps Me

After getting defeated by the DasBlog installation I decided to give SubText a whirl.  As soon as I opened the solution I had errors.  While SubText works with VS2005, it requires you have the web project addition installed, which also requires a VS2005 update to be installed.  After going through all of the required updates I thought I was on my way when I pressed F5 in VS2005 and it launched a web site that took me to the installation pages as outlined in the videos.  It was here where things got shaky because I started running into dbo.subtext_version issues.  I pulled up RssBandit and went to Phil Haack’s blog and found this entry.   It turns out I wasn’t the only one that had a SQL Server installation problems.  It is late and I have to work on Monday so I am off to bed.  I plan on trying the update tomorrow evening and I’ll let you know how it goes.