Download Squad

For the install we started with the basics, and downloaded the installation files. We wanted the source code version, which is available along with a simple web project version on their download page. They also have downloadable help files available. After unzipping the code, we poked around the project in Visual Studio to check out the structure of the code; of course you don't have to do this but we're nosy code hackers. The code is setup as a website project and a DLL project, which looks to do most of the heavy lifting for the blog engine.

In the instructions for getting Blogengine.net installed on your hosting provider, it says to make the directory that will hold the blog engine files into an "application" on the server. So we just went to the control panel for our web hosting, and created a new application directory for the files to reside in. An example is shown below.

Once the directory was setup, it was just simply copying the files up to the server, and viewing the default page. Here we ran into the first minor issue. The configuration file was set to run the site in a security level not supported by our hosting provider, and probably most if not all shared hosting providers will not allow that trust level. We just removed the offending line and the default page started coming up. See below for a shot of the default page.

So now that the pages were coming up, it was time to log in and change the administration account's default password for security. In the screen shot above we were actually already logged in and the admin section is shown on the right side of the page. Next step was to change the setting for the blog name and other information to the proper information.

We have yet to really put the application through some real tests, but so far are impressed with the application. The code is well organized and has support for MetaWeblog API and pings and many other things that would be low on the implementation list if building our own blog solution. But with the ease of the installation, having just the one minor issue, we are impressed and will be trying to use this on a frequent basis to give it a good test.