July 12, 2009 at 9:18 BlogEngine.NET 1.5. Russified assembly with themes and extensions
I built for myself the distribution of the blogging engine BlogEngine.NET (version 1.5.0.7), ready to be deployed on a hosting in seconds and Russified as I need (from slugs to a lot of translation improvements in the special file and the code itself, including extensions), with various extensions and with a large package of topics, but I thought that maybe someone else will come in handy.
Further: for those who do not know what BlogEngine.NET is and what it is eaten with, perhaps a story about it will be interesting, for those who are “in the subject” a list of changes made in the engine.
BlogEngine.NET is a lightweight and reasonably functional open-source blog engine written using ASP.NET technology. It can work both with databases (Microsoft SQL, Microsoft SQL Express, MySQL), and with XML files as storage (by default). With normal blog sizes, there is no performance difference.
An example of BlogEngine out of the box with a standard theme is the engine developer blog .
BlogEngine is not Wordpress. I repeat: this is not Wordpress. Of course, it compels them to compare (in general, the best blog engines on two different platforms). But BlogEngine is a different class engine: it is not so extensible with ready-made plug-ins (although you can write your own rather quickly and simply), but it is as light and fast as possible, providing more functionality than an ordinary blogger needs (not playing with his blog, but just writing it) .
It should not be used where any function may be required: unless you really want to learn ASP.NET by writing the UserControls and extensions you need. But in cases where you need something lightweight, quick to deploy, easily customizable, convenient for the end user (the BlogEngine control panel is much simpler and easier than the Wordpress panel) - then it makes sense to try BlogEngine. The developer’s FAQ has the question “Will my mother be able to use it?” :) The answer is yes, she can. Everything is quite simple and intuitive for both the user and the developer. For a developer, in general, it’s enough to download the project posted on the official website in Visual Studio and enjoy the convenience of working with beautifully written code :)
Nothing of the kind: many serious companies offer Unix and Windows hosting at the same prices. Moreover: Windows hosting usually has a test period. Personally, I am satisfied with Windows hosting from Infobox and Agave , but I do not insist at all. In addition, BlogEngine.NET hosting requires far less powerful hosting than Wordpress.
If you are only interested in the ASP.NET platform, then this is a good constructor for starting. BlogEngine code is written beautifully and easily, it is understandable enough even without special training in the field of .NET technology. You can freely dig into it and easily fix it for yourself, at the same time gradually understanding ASP.NET. If you have never worked with ASP.NET, but would like to try - just play around without trying to write your own CMS from scratch - try BlogEngine, you won’t regret it. It is quite possible to make your own CMS based on it, everything is ready for a regular non-blogging CMS (NB it doesn’t mean done ;-) For example, there is support for tree-based organization of pages in the control panel, but for the actual site it will have to be encoded independently).
BlogEngine works without a database (although it is quite possible to connect it) and for installation you only need to upload to the hosting and specify write permissions for the App_Data folder. Then load the main page; for the first time, it will load longer, but then everything will happen quickly.
It's simple: you yourself had to have on hand a ready-to-install blog engine distribution for ASP.NET, Russified enough to give control to the hands of a simple user. So that there are themes and extensions already. Those extensions for the use of which you do not need to enter UserControls in the themes. This, of course, is not difficult, but not for this case :)
Since BlogEngine has enough problems in Russian-speaking expanses from scratch, and moreover, not all problems are solved by editing scripts (for some reason, you need to rebuild the kernel, and now not everyone will open it Microsoft Visual Studio for this ...), then rummaged, corrected - and laid out.
If nobody even needs it (in the end, we have little use of ASP.NET in such a “light” segment of the web, and it’s a pity, very good technology), then at least I need it. :)
Download, if anyone is interested, you can from my site ; there is a list of topics and extensions used with links to sources. If something doesn’t work correctly (it may well have not been tested industrially :) - write, we'll figure it out. :)
Further: for those who do not know what BlogEngine.NET is and what it is eaten with, perhaps a story about it will be interesting, for those who are “in the subject” a list of changes made in the engine.
What is BlogEngine.NET?
BlogEngine.NET is a lightweight and reasonably functional open-source blog engine written using ASP.NET technology. It can work both with databases (Microsoft SQL, Microsoft SQL Express, MySQL), and with XML files as storage (by default). With normal blog sizes, there is no performance difference.
An example of BlogEngine out of the box with a standard theme is the engine developer blog .
What is not BlogEngine?
BlogEngine is not Wordpress. I repeat: this is not Wordpress. Of course, it compels them to compare (in general, the best blog engines on two different platforms). But BlogEngine is a different class engine: it is not so extensible with ready-made plug-ins (although you can write your own rather quickly and simply), but it is as light and fast as possible, providing more functionality than an ordinary blogger needs (not playing with his blog, but just writing it) .
It should not be used where any function may be required: unless you really want to learn ASP.NET by writing the UserControls and extensions you need. But in cases where you need something lightweight, quick to deploy, easily customizable, convenient for the end user (the BlogEngine control panel is much simpler and easier than the Wordpress panel) - then it makes sense to try BlogEngine. The developer’s FAQ has the question “Will my mother be able to use it?” :) The answer is yes, she can. Everything is quite simple and intuitive for both the user and the developer. For a developer, in general, it’s enough to download the project posted on the official website in Visual Studio and enjoy the convenience of working with beautifully written code :)
What can he out of the box?
- It’s normal to work with caching (without bothering this user), mobile devices (they are given a special theme by default), trackbacks, pingbacks and even OpenSearch (you can insert a blog search into the search bar of modern browsers in addition to Yandex, Google, Bing, etc. d.)
- Tree comments, gravatars, notification of comments on mail, ping services
- Multi-author blogging, detailed author profiles
- Widgets for the tag cloud, twitter, favorite blogs, notification of new posts on the mail, drag and drop work with these widgets
- Autoresize uploaded images
- Using bbcode in comments, preview comments
- Flash MP3 audio player
- and many many others!
Windows hosting is expensive !!
Nothing of the kind: many serious companies offer Unix and Windows hosting at the same prices. Moreover: Windows hosting usually has a test period. Personally, I am satisfied with Windows hosting from Infobox and Agave , but I do not insist at all. In addition, BlogEngine.NET hosting requires far less powerful hosting than Wordpress.
Who needs this?
If you are only interested in the ASP.NET platform, then this is a good constructor for starting. BlogEngine code is written beautifully and easily, it is understandable enough even without special training in the field of .NET technology. You can freely dig into it and easily fix it for yourself, at the same time gradually understanding ASP.NET. If you have never worked with ASP.NET, but would like to try - just play around without trying to write your own CMS from scratch - try BlogEngine, you won’t regret it. It is quite possible to make your own CMS based on it, everything is ready for a regular non-blogging CMS (NB it doesn’t mean done ;-) For example, there is support for tree-based organization of pages in the control panel, but for the actual site it will have to be encoded independently).
Installation
BlogEngine works without a database (although it is quite possible to connect it) and for installation you only need to upload to the hosting and specify write permissions for the App_Data folder. Then load the main page; for the first time, it will load longer, but then everything will happen quickly.
What is changed in this assembly?
- The official translation in the file \ App_GlobalResources \ labels.ru.resx is seriously supplemented and corrected
- Where possible - the names are translated directly in the code (since not everything is taken out in a separate file, and not everything can be taken out without a lot of changes in the engine; I hope someday this will change)
- \ bin \ BlogEngineCore.dll was rebuilt. Now Russian headlines do not turn into slugs of the form d09ed0b1d0be-d0bcd0bdd0b5 (a headache for BlogEngine, because rewriting urls cannot be disabled here), but are shown directly in Russian letters (a la Wikipedia). Personally, I like it that way :) But the plugin for transliterating slugs from posts is included in the assembly as a last resort (unfortunately, this does not apply to categories and tags, so the solution didn’t suit me completely ...)
- Added fully Russified version of TinyMCE instead of English
- Added a large number of extensions, all translated.
- The assembly kit comes with 50 different topics. They were not Russified, however, very few changes are required there (on average, much less than in Wordpress themes; the simpler structured code affects); I think that this will not be a problem, although in the future I plan to translate them, if necessary
What else will need to be done
- Not just translate, but qualitatively translate the engine, especially for the control panel. To remove discrepancies in terms (I repent, there is no end to work ...), and in some places to correct the code for the correct translation.
- Translate topics (at least a few)
- Improve, improve and improve BlogEngine again :) In general, I would like for the whole translation to go through only one file in the future - and then the site would be automatically translated into the language of the logged-in user without tambourines (this allows ASP.NET technology to be implemented out of the box). Beauty :)
Finally, why did I do this
It's simple: you yourself had to have on hand a ready-to-install blog engine distribution for ASP.NET, Russified enough to give control to the hands of a simple user. So that there are themes and extensions already. Those extensions for the use of which you do not need to enter UserControls in the themes. This, of course, is not difficult, but not for this case :)
Since BlogEngine has enough problems in Russian-speaking expanses from scratch, and moreover, not all problems are solved by editing scripts (for some reason, you need to rebuild the kernel, and now not everyone will open it Microsoft Visual Studio for this ...), then rummaged, corrected - and laid out.
If nobody even needs it (in the end, we have little use of ASP.NET in such a “light” segment of the web, and it’s a pity, very good technology), then at least I need it. :)
Download, if anyone is interested, you can from my site ; there is a list of topics and extensions used with links to sources. If something doesn’t work correctly (it may well have not been tested industrially :) - write, we'll figure it out. :)