|
Tuesday
5/16/2006 10:39:32 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Support for outbound TrackBacks has been added. OmniBlogger users can now perform TrackBack pings to link entries to external content.
|
|
|
|
Monday
5/15/2006 2:12:42 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Finally, I'm enjoying a small gap between projects, and that gives me a few hours to revisit OmniBlogger. MichaelWells.com now has an RSS feed.
I've gone with RSS 2.0 for now; I need to do some research to find out whether RSS 1.0 or ATOM 0.3 are worth implementing. As simple as RSS is, I thought it was a neat idea to use a 3rd party RSS generation library, so that as new features and standards and formats are added, it might (in theory) be a simple matter of a library upgrade to take advantage of them.
The library I chose is RSS.NET, an open source solution that is very simple and clean. It's well done, though I have to say that class constructors would be nice on the simpler classes like Image.
|
|
|
|
Thursday
12/23/2004 12:52:23 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Interesting; the first chance I've had to take a look.
|
|
|
|
Wednesday
9/17/2003 2:08:11 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Support for META tags has been added to allow search engines to better index blog entries.
Using this feature, any blog or blog entry can be keyworded, and blogs can also be copyrighted. In both cases, this information is embedded in the HTML as META tags.
|
|
|
|
Wednesday
8/27/2003 11:26:17 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Another experimental feature... I've added the ability to email a blog entry to a friend. This feature saves the cut-and-paste approach (on the odd chance that I actually write something of interest!).
The feature is designed so that the email comes from the sender, and that receiver replies would bo back to the sender. The email only comes in one format -- heavily HTML styled. The emailer used is AspNetEmail (quite a great set of tools), and it's designed to actually email the entire HTML page.
Since this includes the treeview, search box, and other stuff, these features could behave differently in different HTML mail readers. I'd be interested to know what you experience.
|
|
|
|
Tuesday
8/26/2003 3:45:34 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Now that there is enough content in this blog, I've found that searching is more commonplace. Even I use search, to find old entries, and figure out whether I wrote on some topic that has my attention.
|
|
|
|
Friday
7/25/2003 7:50:05 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
As an avid blog reader, I find it terribly annoying when I click on a link in an article, and the referenced page is loaded into the same browser window that I'm reading the blog in. After all, I'm not done reading the blog yet... I simply want to visit the references the author was referring to.
|
|
|
|
Tuesday
6/17/2003 2:11:01 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
The category hierarchy has been enhanced in several ways...
|
|
|
|
Sunday
6/1/2003 6:31:59 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
The administration tools have been enhanced with two useful features...
|
|
|
|
Sunday
6/1/2003 6:29:57 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
As some of my experimental blogs were becoming quite lengthy, Introductions (like this one) have now been added, with an optional link to the full text of the Article.
|
|
|
|
Wednesday
5/28/2003 6:46:26 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Users now have the ability to add comments to blog entries, using the same RichTextBox editor that is used for administration. This allows users to stylize text, and to embed hyperlinks and images for reference.
Try out the Add a Comment feature below to see this nifty .NET WebControl in action.
|
|
|
|
Tuesday
5/27/2003 6:28:16 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Now that the blogging engine is running, and the administrative tools are complete, it's a good time to consider next steps. Features on the plate include;
|
|
|
|
Monday
5/26/2003 11:32:30 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
 The administration tools are now complete. Through a separate website, I manage blogs, modify their title and description, and add or edit blog entries. This is very convenient, and the RichTextBox control is proving to be very capable.
One beef so far... the RichTextBox is not good at persisting its contents. This may just require a setting change, but in certain circumstances, I have lost the contents of the RichTextBox inadvertently, due to a session timeout or other event. Quite aggravating, but I'm not ready to blame the component for this shortcoming just yet.
|
|
|
|
Friday
5/23/2003 11:48:45 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Though it was a good brain-stretching exercise, the Blog category hierarchy has been completed. Although it looks relatively uncomplicated, there are a number of important components that work together to generate the list you see at left (on the MICHAELWELLS.com main website).
|
|
|
|
Friday
5/23/2003 2:06:15 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
As a basic technology foundation for the blogging toolset, I've chosen ASP.NET. The Microsoft .NET framework has proven to be a very flexible and powerful application platform--especially for server-based applications like websites.
By choosing .NET, I also benefit from the (already) wide availability of good WebControls that are available on the market. These greatly simplify web development by encapsulating the desired functionality--with cross-browser support, no less!.
As an immediate benefit, I have selected a product called RichTextBox to handle my blog-creation and editing needs. I'm very pleased with its capabilities and ease of integration so far.
|
|
|
|
Friday
5/23/2003 1:29:54 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
After crafting a website style, a few other decisions seemed obvious.
- First, because I enjoy thinking and writing on a multitude of subjects, I want to be able to separate those thoughts into categories, many of which are related. A category hierarchy seems most efficient.
- Second, thoughts come to me at all times. I want maximum flexibility in how I blog; so an online interface is planned. In this way, I will be able to add entries from work, while on the road, or from a cyber-cafe in Moscow.
- Third, since blogs and RSS are most effective with links, images, and a little font-styling, I need an efficient way to manage rich text (HTML chunks) through the online interface.
- Fourth, blogs have great promise as a convenient way to dissemminate tons of information through different channels that I regularly communicate through. On the MICHAELWELLS.com website, most of these relate to my interests in technology, science, and thought. However, I also see separate applications for blogging to my family (half in the US, half in Russia) with photo and regular news. Blogging can also be used to update clients on project progress, and new-version changes. For my product websites (e.g. www.listingscan.com), blogging can be used to notify customers of new features as they become available. As such, I need to be able to manage and edit blogs centrally, but have them automatically dissemminated through a wide variety of subscriber channels... email recipients, websites, and RSS feeds.
As I progress in the development of these tools, I'll add comments about approaches and technology decisions that others might want to consider.
|
|
|
|
Friday
5/23/2003 1:07:57 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Several people have asked why I don't just use a tool like Blogger to add this kind of capability to my website... and there are several reasons.
|
|
|
|
Friday
5/23/2003 12:50:58 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
After a little work, the database is now running on SQL Server 2000--at least the blog storage portions. Blog Categorization, which I want as a hierarchy, will take some work.
Now, I can begin blogging as the development of MICHAELWELLS.com and chronicle my efforts, decisions, and discoveries for others who intend to do the same.
|