The Vanilla BlogEngine.NET allows comments to be posted via an HTTP post which is great in terms of enabling an AJAX implementation for blog post comments. However, it's great too for spam bots, almost exclusively, offering pay day loans throughout the comment sections of this site. One new year's resolution was to implement a solution using ReCaptcha. In this case the solution may require writing no code.

StackOverflow: How would one integrate ReCaptcha in to BlogEngine.net (ASP.net C#)?

I can't think why anybody would think a pay day loan a good idea when there's Zopa, for example.

First take involved opening solution in Visual Studio 2008 and publishing to localhost and then using FTP to send files individually whereupon we discover that using O2 mobile broadband (via USB) results in files arriving "successfully" on remote web server with file size 0KB. Yuck! Many more takes to replace "successfully" transfered files. Don't blame FileZilla because it's doing only as it advertises and we've had issues with FTP ourselves quite recently from within code we'd written.

Digression: It was necessary to compare file content between local and remote files before assuming successful transfer. Not pretty. Never discovered a better solution that didn't involve MoveIt.

Finally everything copied across and directory turned into Web Application using the DiscountAsp.Net unsurprisingly named Web Application Tool. Instead of blog appearance we have this compilation error!

So it turned out there are at least two ways of resolving this without trying to understand intricacies of ASP.NET Dynamic Compilation and being frustrated by not being able to delete Temporary ASP.NET files on a remote server which denies access to said directories and probably with good reason. Wondering why WebDAV isn't an option here though... probably a good reason I'm not aware of.

• Twenty One step program on How to Convert BlogEngine.NET Web Site to Web Application Project; or
• Follow these instructions on How to Install BlogEngine.NET (which I reckon counts as a single step)

If you see this then everything's turned out okay. Global warming has been corrected. If you care in even the slightest this application defaults to using an XML file datastore and so we need to weigh up whether there's any advantage to pushing this into SQL Server. Climb the mountain because it's there? Okay, it's probably not quite a mountain and we'd not do it in a tutu.

Notes:

MSDN: Understanding ASP.NET Dynamic Compilation

Post Script:

It's a love/hate relationship with Infrastructure.

• By their being responsible for deployment I'm sometimes spared the headache of failed deployment.
  • In this first instance someone else discovers/solves the problem.

• By their being responsible for deployment I'm sometimes victim of failed deployment.
  • In the second instance someone else *is* the source of the problem.

Poetry very incidental.

I'm missing another superlative for Stack Overflow. Whilst trying to decide between BlogEngine.Net and SubText for this blog - using Google as is how every but every decision is made now - the following became apparent:

• BlogEngine code is likely to provide the more interesting read
• SubText is going to be rewritten to use ASP.NET MVC
• One is more stable than the other, supposedly

In other news I attended a London .NET user group talk at Microsoft last Thursday (ASP.NET Webforms versus ASP.NET.MVC) in which I learnt that I fall into the second category of developer: those who want to build apps so that they can charge a client. Eight weeks without a client can do that to you. The argument had the expected key themes:

• Why must we suffer View State?
• Web development should be about being -
  • pragmatic (Webforms)
  • elegant and of highest quality possible via Test Driven Design/Development (MVC)
• ASP.NET MVC currently lacks the cushion (view designer, etc)

Stack Overflow: Who is using BlogEngine.Net for their blog? Does it run well? Will it scale? :P

Mason Lyngby: Switched from SubText to BloggingEngine.NET