While the Blog
phenomena is
several years old, it was only about a month ago (around Christmas) that I began my venture into world of Weblogs. I came across .Text pretty early on because it was one of the few Blog engines that supported some of my basic requirements:
- A FREE (as in beer and speech), open source project preferably based on ASP.NET, and more specifically on C#. Most of my past experience was with JAVA, C/C++, php, and VB (standard asp)... I wanted to learn more about .NET and I figured what better way that to use it!
- I wanted to be able to contribute to the project (it's open source, after all).
- Needed to be able to run the application on my own server and have the solution be database (rather than file) driven to allow for a true n-tier architecture. I know this isn't important for my little Blog, but if the correct architecture and solid design was used from the beginning, it means hopefully the designer(s) had the big picture in mind from the start
- I wanted to use a project that had a strong community behind it... this is the best way to ensure continued success -- well that and the solid design mentioned previously!
However, as I began working with .Text, I realized that the project had been semi-abandoned, and the only sources of information about the project didn't seem to contain any useful information.
ScottW's site talked about a move to
TelligentSystems, TelligetSystems redirected back to Scott's site, the
original forum was closed, the
new forum wasn't even for .Text... in short, I was getting
the run around. Anyhow, after about a month of exploring .Text and the supporting community, and in hopes that others can avoid some of the frustration I encountered, here are some of the conclusions I've reached:
- Scott Watermasysk was the founder and original developer of the .Text Blog engine, and used this GotDotNet workspace for distribution and a source repository. The current version (v0.95) can still be downloaded from that site.
- The .Text workspace (and apparently the majority of development) was abandoned in early 2004 when Scott moved to TelligentSystems.
- The .Text project has been stagnate since this move, but there seems to be a very strong user base as well as a large support/development community still trying to push the project forward.
- TelligentSystems is the new maintainer of the .Text code and will release it as CommunityServer:Blogs when version 1.0 is ready. At that point they say they will release the source code, but it remains to be seen if CS:Blogs will be a community driven, developed, and supported project like .Text was.
I absolutely love the
.Text engine and community and think that it is a great project! However, it is a little upsetting that the
.Text community/userbase was essentially left out in the cold when Scott moved to TS and abandoned work on
.Text. While I've heard many great things about CS:Blogs, simply "upgrading" from
.Text was not and is not a viable option for those of us who either want or require access to the source code. I only hope that once CS v1.0 (and the source) is finally released, that the community-centric atmosphere of
.Text will continue in
CS. If not, perhaps a
.Text fork will be in order...
[Update 1/14/05] It has come to my attention that this post doesn't really give much info about how to go about "Getting Started with .Text"... so perhaps this ammendment will help to shed some light. This is a quote from a
recent post I made to the
CS:Blogs Support forum:
Sorry the post wasn't more helpful. As far as the getting started goes... I suppose you could wait for CS:Blogs v1.0 (or just use a beta, just fill in the info and a download link will be emailed to you) but you won't have source access. You can also download .Text v0.95 (both binary and source are available).
Now, the ASP.NET forums might be closed, but you could probably search them to find answers or, better yet, I would just ask the CS community [here]. I know that this is officially for the CS:Blogs project, but a lot of the .Text community hangs out there, and support is usually pretty readily available. Also, as pointed out in a comment to my post, there are still members of the .Text community who are releasing fixes and enhancements on their own. I've actually done this too. As for getting .Text up and running, I followed this tutorial and used the forums for additional help/guidance. I hope this update will be more helpful...