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Dr.NETjes

Dion Olsthoorn on ASP.NET

QuickBlog: Free VS2005 template for a weblog application

Inspired by Scott Guthrie's MyLists example webapplication, I've made a simple (but fully functional) weblogging application in Visual Studio 2005, which you can download here (all sources included).

Add this template to your VS2005 VWD ProjectTemplates folder (or just unzip it somewhere and open it with Visual Web Developer). The Visual Web Developer C#-ProjectTemplates folder is default located in \My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual Web Developer\CSharp.

Note that I've created this weblog example-application in only 4 hours(!), and it contains not a single line of code.
Yep, that's right: 0 lines of code!!!  I accomplished this by using:

  • SQL2005 Database designer of VS.NET 2005 (no code)
  • TableAdapter Wizard to create typed datasets (no code)
  • ObjectDataSources using the typed datasets (no code)
  • GridView and DetailsView controls to create/read/update/delete postings and comments (no code)
  • FreeTextBox for richtext creation/editing of postings (no code)

Features of this QuickBlog webapplication:

  • Master- and Contentpages
  • Table-less design
  • Skinning en Theming
  • Creating and editing of Postings (by admin)
  • Readers can add Comments (admin can remove them)
  • Login control, Membership
  • A lot of GridViews and DetailsViews
  • RSS feed

Some screenshots:

Visitor writing a comment:

After logging on, the admin can manage postings and comments (or create a new posting):

Published Feb 10 2006, 10:03 AM by Dr.NETjes
Filed under:

Comments

 

Teun said:

Nice! Could you tell a little bit on how you did the RSS feed without writing code?
February 10, 2006 5:22 AM
 

sureshot said:

this.is.KILLER!!!!

exactly what i'm looking for.

>Add this template to your VS2005 >ProjectTemplates folder

Ive copied the zip here but the IDE is not picking it up, what am i missing?
February 10, 2006 5:25 AM
 

Dion said:

@sureshot: see if this article can help you out: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/01/CodeTemplates/default.aspx
February 10, 2006 5:46 AM
 

dion said:

@Teun: the RSS feed is just an aspx page (with ContentType="text/xml"). This RSS page contains an ObjectDataSource and a Repeater. I've used Eval methods to extract the column-data from the ObjectDataSource.
February 10, 2006 5:53 AM
 

sureshot said:

cheers boss
February 10, 2006 5:54 AM
 

Wim Hollebrandse said:

That's excellent work Dion. Well done.
February 10, 2006 6:12 AM
 

Niels said:

Let's get rid of .TEXT :-). This is pretty cool
February 10, 2006 7:57 AM
 

Aidan Marcuss said:

The ZIP appears to have some problems:

Warning: skipping "images\". The 32-bit CRC stored in the local header for this file is not the same as the 32-bit CRC stored in the central header
Warning: skipping "Bin\". The 32-bit CRC stored in the local header for this file is not the same as the 32-bit CRC stored in the central header
Warning: skipping "App_Themes\default\". The 32-bit CRC stored in the local header for this file is not the same as the 32-bit CRC stored in the central header
Warning: skipping "App_Data\". The 32-bit CRC stored in the local header for this file is not the same as the 32-bit CRC stored in the central header
Warning: skipping "App_Code\". The 32-bit CRC stored in the local header for this file is not the same as the 32-bit CRC stored in the central header
Warning: skipping "admin\". The 32-bit CRC stored in the local header for this file is not the same as the 32-bit CRC stored in the central header

But I really like the idea of this.
February 10, 2006 10:09 AM
 

dion said:

@Aidan: I've checked the zip file both using the WinXP integrated zipper and WinRar, but didn't have any problems. Do you use an older version of WinZip?
February 10, 2006 10:35 AM
 

Samboy LIms said:

Great!

1. Download the Zip file.
2. Unzip its contents, be sure the the for folder name is 'QuickBlog' (for images to work)
3. Fire up VS 2005
4. Open Web Site->Locate the 'QuickBlog' folder
5. Right click on Default.aspx -> View in Browser!

Joy!

Thanks for the great sample!!!
February 10, 2006 12:35 PM
 

Mihir Solanki said:

Excellent !!! Thanks for sharing
February 10, 2006 2:37 PM
 

Serge van den Oever [Macaw] said:

Great you published this... but I'm missing the part where you wanted to proof that VS.NET 2005 can beat Ruby on Rails on spped of development ans minimal amount of code;-)
February 17, 2006 5:16 PM
 

energed said:

Great! Your blog (not just this entry) is just like said earlier 'Killer'!
March 2, 2006 1:46 AM
 

Simone Busoli Weblog said:

July 24, 2006 7:47 AM
 

tejas9165 said:

Hey ,

I have unzipped the file

and as said i am having Visual Web Developer 2005.

Now when i right click on default.aspx

It gives me an error saying

" Server Application Unavailable "

November 18, 2008 6:15 AM

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