/README.md

DanTup's ASP.NET MVC / Razor Blog Engine

========================================



This is the source code for the new version of blog, being written in ASP.NET MVC. The latest version of the code can

always be found at [code.dantup.com/blog](http://code.dantup.com/blog).



At the time of writing, [my blog](http://blog.dantup.com/) is hosted on Google App Engine, which was written as an

excercise in learning Python and a little about GAE. As my main skills are in .NET, it seemed a good idea to rewrite the

blog using some new technologies to take advantage of this, including:



* [ASP.NET MVC 3](http://www.asp.net/mvc)

* [Entity Framework Code-First](

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/16/code-first-development-with-entity-framework-4.aspx)

* [Razor](http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/02/introducing-razor.aspx)

* [NuGet](http://nuget.org/) for package dependencies

* Markdown (via [MarkdownHelper](http://nuget.org/List/Packages/MarkdownHelper) / MarkdownDeep.NET) (ok, this one might

not be so new, but it's new to me!)



I'm sharing the code in the hope that it might be useful to others. I learned most of what I know from the online

community, so [sharing most of my source code online](http://code.dantup.com/) is an attempt to try and give a little

back to others that are learning too. Hopefully, you should be able to run this project without any configuration. Just

check the code out, open the solution, and press F5! As long as you have IIS Express installed, it should automatically:



* Download dependencies from NuGet during compilation (to avoid bloating the repo with multiple versions of binaries)

* Start up IIS Express (you may be prompted to allow it to configure port 50000 to point at the project)

* Create a SQL CE database file in the App_Data folder (to avoid requiring SQL or SQL Express)

* Populate the SQL CE database with test data



The blog should be fully-functional without any configuration. If this is not the case, please let me know so I can fix

it! You can contact me through BitBucket or [my blog](http://blog.dantup.com/).



The new site will be hosted at [AppHarbor](http://appharbor.com/), which seems to the closest thing to [Google App

Engine](http://appengine.google.com/) for small ASP.NET apps (Azure seems overkill, and isn't free for tiny apps).



Code pushed to this repository will always be running at [dev.dantup.com](http://dev.dantup.com/) for testing. Once I've

reproduced enough functionality from the GAE version, my live blog [blog.dantup.com](http://dev.dantup.com/) will be

moved over to it.



Web.config Settings

===================



### BlogAuthor

The name of the author of the blog. Used in places such as the Feed author tags.



### BlogAuthorEmail

The email address of the author. If provided, this will add an "Email Me" button to the sidebar.



### BlogAuthorTwitter

The twitter username of the author. If provided, this will add a Twitter button to the sidebar.



### BlogAuthorSites

A comma-separated list of sites owned by the author, used to output link rel=me tags. Note: Comma-sep is nasty, hoping

for this to be moved to proper strongly-typed settings in the future if AppHarbor adds support (please vote for this

here: http://feedback.appharbor.com/forums/95687-general/suggestions/1855625-add-the-ability-to-specify-web-config-transformati)



### OpenIDProvider and OpenIDLocalID

Used to allow you to use your blog URL as an Open ID identifier.



### BlogTitle and BlogTagline

The title and tagline used in the blog header. BlogTitle also appears at the end of page titles (eg. "{pagename} -

{blogtitle}").



### BlogFooter

This is shown at the foot of the page. NOTE: This is Markdown to allow for hyperlinks etc.



### PostFooter

This is shown at the foot of the each post in the blog. NOTE: This is Markdown to allow for hyperlinks etc. and has the

feed url appended so that it is usable in the Footer, eg.:

> If you found this article interesting, why not \[subscribe to my feed\]\[feedurl\]?

This is a valid PostFooter, and the link named "feedurl" will be added automatically.



### FeedPostFooter

This is shown at the foot of the each post in the feed. NOTE: This is Markdown to allow for hyperlinks etc. and has the

post url appended so that it is usable in the Footer, eg.:

> This post was served up via my RSS feed. Please \[visit the original article\]\[posturl\] to read/post comments.

This is a valid FeedPostFooter, and the link named "posturl" will be added automatically.



### DatabaseHost, DatabaseName, DatabaseUsername, DatabasePassword

SQL Server database credentials. If DatabaseHost or DatabaseName are not provided, SQL CE will be used. If

DatabaseUsername or DatabasePassword are not provided, integrated security will be used.



### AllowCreateDatabase

Boolean to control whether the database will automatically be created if it doesn't exist. This won't work on AppHarbor,

as you're unable to create databases.



### BlockRobots

Defaults to False. Set to True if you want to serve a robots.txt to block all robots. This is useful on dev/staging

sites (such as http://dev.dantup.com/, which has this value set to True in the AppHarbor control panel to avoid being

indexed by search engines as it has duplicate content from my live blog).



### GoogleAnalyticsID

Defaults to empty. If set, Google Analytics code will be output in the footer of the page using this tracking ID.



### FeedBurnerUrl

Defaults to empty. If set, all lnks to the RSS Feed will go here instead of /feed. Also, any requests to /feed will be

redirected here unless the user agent contains "feedburner".



### GoogleValidation

Validation token for Google services that require a meta tag to be inserted in your site.



### BingValidation

Validation token for Bing services that require a meta tag to be inserted in your site.



Updates

=======



If you want notification of when new changes are pushed to this code, you have a few options:



* [Check back frequently](http://code.dantup.com/blog) - Nasty, manual :(

* [Subscribe to the BitBucket project feed](https://bitbucket.org/DanTup/dantup-blog/rss) - An RSS feed of commits.

* [Follow the project on BitBucket](https://bitbucket.org/DanTup/dantup-blog/follow) - Shows on your BB dashboard.

* [Follow @DanTupBlog on Twitter](http://twitter.com/DanTupBlog) - Announces (via [TweetHarbor](http://tweetharbor.apphb.com)

whenever a new build is pushed (and successfully deployed).

* [Follow @DanTup on Twitter](http://twitter.com/DanTup) - I'll RT @DanTupBlog or tweet when significant updates are made.