Site News

Notice: Server Maintenance Friday June 20 8:00 PM EDT - 12:00 AM EDT

tmorton — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:33:00 GMT

The ASP.NET website will be unavailable Friday June 20 from 8:00 PM EDT to 12:00 AM EDT (currently GMT-4) for some server maintenance.

Additionally, the Silverlight.NET, IIS.NET, and WindowsClient.NET websites will also be down during the same time period. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this will cause, and are working diligently to keep the downtime to a minimum.

Regards,

Terri Morton
Program Manager, Telligent

Notice: Hardware Upgrade Tonight 10.15PM PDT

tmorton — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:31:00 GMT

The ASP.NET Weblogs have become so popular that we are undertaking a range of hardware upgrades to handle the increased traffic. Two weeks ago we moved the ASP.NET Weblogs to dedicated web and database servers. Tonight we will upgrade the RAM on the database server to 16 gigabytes. We expect a 15 minute outage starting at about 10.15PM PDT as ORCSWeb shuts down the server, adds the additional RAM, and then restarts the server.

This hardware upgrade should result in increased performance across all of the ASP.NET Weblogs.

We apologize if this short outage will cause you any inconvenience, but we hope you and your visitors will enjoy the benefits of the upgrade.

Comment Spam

ScottW — Wed, 23 May 2007 14:33:00 GMT

We have updated a couple of the spam rule settings which should result in a very signifigant decrease in the number of "possible-spam" comments you see. By our estimate 99+% of them were actually spam comments.

For the next couple of days please be on the look out for any false positives you might find. If it is more than a couple, we will have to re-adjust the rules.

Also note, we have added this blog back to aggregate list until we figure out a better solution for posting update notices.

weblogs.asp.net updates

ScottW — Thu, 17 May 2007 19:24:00 GMT

Hi Everyone,

First and foremost, I want to apologize for the recent rollout of weblogs.asp.net. This update is something that has been in the works for a while, was tested, and generally well planned but did not go off how we had envisioned. There are a variety of reasons for this, but in the end, they really do not matter.

I personally started this blogging community on my own little server nearly 5 years ago. It is the only big aggregate feed I still actively subscribe to and read. Although it may not seem like it, every change we have made to the service is one that we believe will be in the best interest for everyone. This does not mean we are always correct and we are certainly willing to work with anyone of you on ways to improve the site and community.

If you have any suggestions, comments, etc please feel free to contact me at any time directly at scottw@telligent.com.

As for how we can improve things:

You received this email, so we now should have a system in place that will let us actively communicate with you.
We will post minor updates/notices posted on the old SiteNews blog I used to maintain in the old days: http://weblogs.asp.net/sitenews/. I will remove this blog from the main feed, so if you are interested, please subscribe to it directly.
We will set up a beta site before any major significant upgrades and will try to get you 7 to 10 days to test and give feedback

What has changed or happened recently:

The new version of the site supports a much improved theme engine. You can extensively personalize your blog (including images) without writing any CSS. If you want to you can also still add custom CSS too.
The new version of themes also supports sharing of themes (in the "Change how my blogs looks" section of your blog look for the Import/Export buttons). So please share any great themes you create with your fellow community members (as an FYI, our October release will allow you to re-arrange and add widgets to your blog)
We now support adding files/images to your blog (Control Panel > My Blog > Manage Content > Blog Files). This is very different from the previous attachment/enclosure support. These files can be used in your design, screen shots for a post, etc.
Much better spam support.

If you want more details on how blog themes work: Wiki Article: http://docs.communityserver.org/wiki/page.aspx/203/

Video: http://communityserver.org/blogs/videos/archive/2007/04/23/blog-themes.aspx

Some of what weve recently fixed:

Fixed: JavaScript encoding issue. If you previously had JavaScript in your news section it was accidently encoded during the upgrade. This issue has been fixed, but it will require you re-insert your JavaScript.
Fixed: Self trackbacks some posts seemed to trackback to themselves. This was a result of the staging server grabbing content from the live database. It has been disabled and will not be a problem in the future.
Fixed: The file feature I mentioned in #3 did not have the proper server credentials and caused an error when saving a file.
New hardware: We recently upgraded all the hardware for this site (web and database). Things seem to be performing much better and we will have a significant update as well by the end of July which should push things forward even more.
Fixed: Issues with IE6.

Again, we are really sorry the way things transpired. Myself and Rob have been part of this community since back in his Microsoft days. We fought hard back then to make changes to give this community a chance to survive then and I assure you we are still doing the same today.

Thanks,
Scott
scottw@telligent.com

P.S. About 50% of the emails sent were bounced, so we are going to have to figure out a safer way to send email updates in the future, so I have reposted this to the SiteNews blog. After it clears the home page, I will remove this blog from aggregating to the home page, but for now it is the best way to get the message out. Sorry to all of you who just want to read some excellent .NET content. It is coming. :)

Full-Text Feeds

ScottW — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 03:54:00 GMT

See here for more details.

Site Update : Reloaded

ScottW — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:57:00 GMT

To save myself from posting a comment in everyone's blog, here is a quick run down of what happened and is currently happening:

Upgrade Issues
Due to a freak chance of fate, a hardware issue arose on Monday, about 36 hours after I had posted a minor build update. The first thought in most people's heads (maybe even mine)...."Scott broke the server". So we rolled back the site to its pre-Saturday state and all was good for about 30 seconds. Upon further review, it looked like a NIC was loosing some packets, so we switched to the machines backup NIC. However, it is looking more like it is a router issue, so it is not 100% resolved yet, but it is actively being worked on by the fine OrcsWeb folks.

List of Bloggers
Yes this has been updated and no it is not permanent....sort of. I am open to suggestions, but displaying 800 to 1400 blogs doesn't make much sense either. The idea is to get the home page size down to a more reasonable number (some people still pay by the byte). Ordering by who posts the most and alphabetically does work as the number of blogs increases. I tried to do it by last updated time, but not everyone has set their time zone setting, so it was still off. At the moment, I simply grab 200 random bloggers. I am open to suggestions.

Moderation and Closed Comments
This is still not full proof and does not fit everyone's needs, but I think it was a very necessary step. A future version of Community Server :: Blogs will enable much better control over who can post comments (and when/etc). However, limiting the surface area was a nice quick fix. I had been spending quite a bit of time every day deleting comment spam bloggers were not deleting themselves. This is likely the reason some of you never saw the problem. I am aware that useful comments do come in after 30 days, but I am confident that the spam to useful comment ratio takes a huge nose dive for the worse with each passing day.

In addition, the UI/UE (user experience) are also far from perfect. I did a tweak the feedback admin page last night and removed the in-line options which seemed to confuse people.

Minor Site Update

ScottW — Sun, 08 Aug 2004 02:43:00 GMT

The weblogs.asp.net/blogs.msdn.com bits were updated tonight. The following features were added:

Comments per blog can now be moderated.
- This is configured on the Preferences page (Admin > Options > Preferences)
- Individual comments can be toggled on the feedback page (Admin > Feedback)
- An email will be sent after each comment is posted. This will let the admin know if the comment needs to be moderated or not. In addition, it will contain a link which will toggle the status.
- When a user makes a comment to a moderated post they will be directed to a page stating the comment needs to be approved before it will show up.
Multiple comments can now be deleted at one time
This as well happens on the Feedback page (Admin > Feedback). Simply click the checkbox next to any comment you wish to delete. Then click “delete” at the bottom of the page Comment form expiration
The new comment form is now deactivated on any post older than 30 days.
This is currently a global setting. In the future it will be configurable by each blogger.

This build is not ready for mass consumption yet, so I am not sure if/when it will be released to the public.

Really Minor Update

ScottW — Wed, 02 Jun 2004 01:57:00 GMT

I posted a very minor update tonight.

You should now be able to go to Admin >> Options >> Preferences and globally turn your comments on or off. There is still NO confirmation the update was successful. There will be a major update in June or July which will target the comment and membership system. Stay tuned.

Please let me know if you find anything else that used to work and now does not.

-Scott

New Build Coming

ScottW — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 04:56:00 GMT

The first run of 0.96 should be posted tomorrow (Feb 9, 2004) night, so you will likely see some lights flickering.

-Scott

.Text How To Column

ScottW — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 19:40:00 GMT

I have started a category/column on my personal blog about some of .Text's feature. (rss). I probably will not touch much of the code, but I will try to cover all of the core features.

-Scott

Beta Search

ScottW — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 02:23:00 GMT

I posted a demo/beta search for .Text (and weblogs.asp.net) at: http://scottwater.com/tempsearch/

You can read about here.

ViewState Error

ScottW — Tue, 23 Dec 2003 14:47:00 GMT

Seems to be something off with the viewstate and comments. I will look into this soon. Sorry.

Update: This error has been corrected.

Microsoft Only Feed

ScottW — Tue, 23 Dec 2003 03:59:00 GMT

Grouping of feeds will get dramatically better in a couple of weeks.

In the mean time, you can now view a Microsoft only home page at: http://weblogs.asp.net/default.aspx?GroupID=2 and subscribe to a Microsoft only feed at: http://weblogs.asp.net/mainfeed.aspx?GroupID=2

In addition, if you want to skip Microsoft bloggers, you can view and subscribe here as well: http://weblogs.asp.net/default.aspx?GroupID=4 and http://weblogs.asp.net/mainfeed.aspx?GroupID=4

The original links (no groupID's) will continue to display everyone who blogs here.

-Scott

Also, speaking of sydications, although category feeds always worked, I do not think most people knew they existed, so I tweaked the url and made them display right next to the category. For example, updates to this site can be viewed via: http://weblogs.asp.net/sitenews/category/1813.aspx/rss .

Also again, all of the individual feeds should now have a valid atom feed. Ex: http://weblogs.asp.net/sitenews/atom.aspx

New Entry Settings

ScottW — Tue, 23 Dec 2003 03:53:00 GMT

As I mentioned earlier, there are a couple of new syndication features you can take advantage of here (http://weblogs.asp.net)

While posting, if you view "Advanced Options" (you know, the panel you never open :) You should see the following

Published - Allow the post to be displayed publicly (this was always there)
Allow Comments - Allow comments to be posted to this entry (In your preferences, you can turn comments off globally)
Display on HomePage - Display on your blogs home page (as well as http://weblogs.asp.net). If you do not want to post it to your own blogs home page, I do not want it on the main home page :)
Syndicate on Main Feed - Include this post in the sites mainfeed (http://weblogs.asp.net/mainfeed.aspx) and your own main feed.
Syndicate Description Only - Only syndicate the “Excerpt“
Include in Aggregate Site - Global setting for inclusion in the main site

In addition, on the advanced option panel, you will see a textbox for an "EntryName". This will allow you to name your post instead of just using the EntryID. Please note if you change this value, your post will post will 404 (more likely error...but should be a 404 :)

0.95 Was Posted

ScottW — Tue, 23 Dec 2003 02:51:00 GMT

See what I forgot ...btw, this is a feature, see how you did not get the full post :)...(read more)