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