I woke up quite early this morning and set up my personal computer with my favorites toys :

• VS2008 with Resharper 4,
• Download Castle Windsor, log4net, TestDriven.net, GhostDoc, TeamCity VS2008 plugin, TeamCity tray
• TeamCity (i did not tried it before, how stupid I was…),
• set up a project on google code (SVN repository, wiki, etc)
• set up turtoiseSVN with the google repository,
• created a solution, a project and one unit test,
• commit,
• configure TeamCity to check-out my SVN project on google code, build the project and run the test,
• after a few minutes 1rst build succeded !

I’m very impressed by the quality of TeamCity. For those who don’t know, TeamCity is a build server developed by JetBrains (Resharper, IntelliJ and other GODies). I’ve already tried other products of this kind but this is by far the easier to use. It directly supports VS 2005/2008 solution files (.sln) and I just had to fill 2-3 forms to have a running environment. TC also supports NAnt, Ant, MSBuild and lots of other build tools.

I’m Ready !

My blog is now set up and I plan to write some articles on the following subjects :

• How to set-up and design a web site build by multiple teams with independent deployments,
• How to design an AJAX Web site with HTTP streaming (Lightstreamer),
• How to design a build environment : build, unit tests, deployment and integration tests for an ASP.NET web site with Selenium RC,
• Why Resharper is TDD’s best friend.

I’ve set up my profile on proagora.com (in french).

After spending quite a lot of time arranging and completing my book list, I asked myself if there was not a WordPress plug-in which can manage this for me. After 5 minutes on google I found not just what I was looking for, but really better. The plug in is named Now Reading and have the following functionalities:

• add books by ISBN and automatically retrieve book informations on Amazon (great),
• provide a library page visible on the blog,
• fully manageable book list in WordPress administration section,
• I can edit reviews of the books, rate them
• manage list of read, currently reading and planned books.

The library is available here and in the menu on the right.

I’m starting to make a list of books. I want this list to be easily accessible so it will not be hosted in a blog post but in separate page.

EDIT : My book list is also accessible from the link in the top right corner of the blog.

Since there are good chances that I post code samples in the blog, I wanted a good way to format them and I think I found one. There’s a WordPress plug-in which uses this Syntax Highlighter written in JavaScript (the Highlight occurs client-side).

For my personal use, a good syntax highlighter should :

• be easy to use, I don’t want to have to make lots of manipulations to output a well formatted code,
• allow easy editing : if my code is escaped with lots of HTML tags and CSS, it won’t be very convenient to work with while editing a post,
• allow visitor to copy paste it, without having the same kind of HTML tags disturbance,
• support a least C# and XML,
• output formatted code in RSS.

Let see how this plug-in render :

// Hello1.cs
public class Hello1
{
   public static void Main()
   {
      System.Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");
   }
}

Not too bad. Let’s see with a XML document now :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
    <configSections>
        <section
            name="castle"
            type="Castle.Windsor.Configuration.AppDomain.CastleSectionHandler, Castle.Windsor" />
    </configSections>

    <castle>
        <components>
        </components>
    </castle>
</configuration>

Fine !

I just see one problem with that solution : since Syntax Highlight is processed client side (JavaScript), the code will not be highlighted in RSS :-(

I found an other solutions that can do the job : http://www.manoli.net/csharpformat/format.aspx is an online service that can encode source code snippets in HTML. The annoying point with that is that it generates quite a lot of CSS/HTML and I fear the day where I will have to update some piece of code surrounded with 5465451 HTML tags…

Round One : Online Service VS personal blog publishing platform

I read quite a lot of blogs but I must admit than I’ve never looked which tool was behind. After lurking on some of my favorites blogs and some searches on google, I found that there are 2 main ways to make a blog… excluding developing one myself

• register to an online Blog service, like Blogger, MySpace, etc…
• or host the blog myself and use a personal blog publishing platform (preferably open source)

The second one is more interesting for me : I can customize it if required, I’ve access to the Database so I can migrate the Blog elsewhere and it allow me to do lots of other geek’s stuff.

Ok, I’ve chosen, I WILL USE THAT ! Mhh, but which one ?

Round Two : .NET/SQL Server VS PHP/MySQL

As I’m a .NET developer, I first tried to find an ASP.NET solution and found the Subtext project (used by one of my favorites blogger : Ayende Rahien ). But this solution did not seem perfect to me :

• this is not as easy to find a host for an ASP.NET/SQL Server solution than it is for a PHP/MySQL one,
• I found more mature (more functionalities) and active projects in the PHP/MySQL world.

Final Round : Dotclear VS WordPress

I found two interesting solutions : Dotclear and WordPress. After installing EasyPHP I set up both solutions locally and start playing with them. I’ve to admit that my final decision came quite fast because WordPress is really an impressive product :

• very intuitive, easy to configure and really smart,
• the WYSIWYG text editor contains everything required to edit a post and every function can be accessed with a keyboard shortcut,
• possibility to create pages : these are not included in the blog’s ticket flow but are accessible with the menu. I plan to use them to host more “advanced” documents than simple blog tickets.
• I found a theme (skin) that i like on Fahlstad site : http://www.fahlstad.se/themes/ (the fspring one)
• LOTS of plugins