We software engineers like to overbuild at times. I have seen some traffic increase on this blog, sure, but nothing that the current xml backend can’t handle. On the other hand, hey, in case I see a 100-fold increase in the near future, then I’ll be happier if I have something more robust already in place, so I just followed Al Nyveldt’s tutorial and swapped to a MS SQL back-end – it went smoothly overall, but I apologize if any of you experienced some glitchy stuff!

Sure, a small wooden box would do the job, but just in case, shouldn’t we build a more scalable solution? (image from CIA – The World Factbook)

I have been slammed with work lately, and couldn’t find the time to do this, even though I have wanted to for a while. Well, it’s done – this blog now runs on BlogEngine.Net 1.5.1.14! One of the reasons I wanted to give it a try is the multiple-widget zone feature, which is unfortunately not yet in the 1.5 “official” release, so I went the adventurous route, and here we are! I still need to do some minor polishing on the styling in the next few days, but so far, everything looks like it’s running smoothly.

If you are using Blogengine.Net, and struggle to moderate comments, you should check out Commentor, an extension by rtur.net. The lack of comment moderation tools in the Blogengine admin section is one of its weaknesses, especially when you compare it to WordPress. Commentor addresses that problem, by providing one page where you can manage all the comments, including the new comments awaiting approval. Thank you, great job!

I have been a bit frustrated by the sometimes erratic behavior of the code formatter that ships with Blogengine.Net. It works well for C# code, but I still couldn't figure out why it totally garbled my attempt at VB code. So I was happy to see a post from a credible source titled "Best Code Syntax Highlighter for Snippets in your Blog". Turns out, after looking at the comments, I am not convinced yet I have found the Holy Grail of code formatting, but on the other hand, it triggered me to try out Windows Live Writer; and indeed, Hanselman has a point - why haven't I used it before? It's just so much more comfortable!