Over the past few months I've been getting various requests for portions (or all) of my blog engine. The project was not open or shared source... until now. Having had enough requests, I figured I should finally go back through my code and do the refactoring I've been putting off for quite some time now. I went ahead and did my cleanup, added a few more features, streamlined the API, simplified the code tremendously, fixed up the database a bit, and made a sample application to ship with it. Now I'm finally ready to release this blog engine under the name Minima as a February 2007 CTP. The files are listed below. One file is the Minima solution and the other is the database (yes, RAR only-- I don't do ZIP).

As far as licensing... it's a shared source project. Meaning, I'm going to continue development on it and release new CTPs as time goes on. I have a list of things I want to implement in future releases and I'll be shipping those in future CTPs. The license does however allow for modifications... as that's the entire point! This is a template for you own blog system and you can add to it add to it as see fit. However, please be warned that I'll be releasing new versions in the future. So, you may want to keep track of your changes or communicate with me about them. You really don't want to get into the situation where you say "Oh man... he released an assembly to do exactly what I wanted... uh oh... I rebuilt this entire section... this is going to get sloppy!" Just be careful with your changes. Furthermore, no matter how much you change it, you must put somewhere on your blog that your blog either uses Minima or is based on Minima. Lastly, the disclaimer is the typical disclaimer: neither myself or my company will be liable for any usage in any way, shape, or form of either this application or derivatives of it.

By the way... this is why my blog was flaky lately. I've been doing constant deployments to production, which caused all kinds of problems as this web site was my QA system.

Now, here are the release notes as seen in the ReleaseNotes.xml in the MinimaLibrary project in the RAR. Please pay special attention to the "Technology" and "As a Training Tool" sections as it explains the technology in this application, which I think will serve as an example for each of us in many areas. This is why I'm labeling this entry with so many labels.

Purpose

Minima is designed to give developers a minimalistic template for creating a feature rich alternative to Blogger, Wordpress, and other large-scale blogging systems in manner consistent with the technologies and design paradigms of ASP.NET 2.0, XHTML, CSS, ECMAScript, and the Framework Design Guidelines.

Minimalistic?

Minima is minimalistic in a number of respects. First, does not overload itself with every possible feature in the known universe. Next, it's designed to put extra features as add-ons in an effort to keep the code somewhat maintainable. Furthermore, the primary way of interacting with Minima is a single facade (a class designed to make interaction with the internal mechanics easier) with very understandable methods. This facade is actually the API exposed as a WCF service. Finally, in this release there is no client application; however, as I say, there is a very easy to use API. It should cover most everything you need.

There are also other dimensions to it's minimalism. For example, I put in my mini-exception monitoring system, which notifies me of any exceptions thrown from the web site. I could have used the Application Blocks, but I went the more minimal route instead Be clear on this: I'm a complete minimalist and purist. I refuse to have multiple computers, never put two toppings on my ice scream, hate putting anything on my sandwiches, I never use MODs for games, NEVER wear shirts with logos, and never wear more than 2 colors at a time. I hate stuff that gets overly complex. So, I'm a minimalist and this fits me.

Blog Management Application?

There is no management application in this release. I personally use is a small interface I wrote in WPF, which communicates via WCF to the primary server. It was my first real WPF application I wrote and I wrote it before I deeply understood XAML, so I wrote the entire thing using C#. (Those of you who were ASP/PHP masters before learning ASP.NET and therefore wrote your first project in pure C# without any markup will know what I mean) I'm rebuilding it now in mostly XAML with a little code here and there for WCF interaction.

Having said all that, you can very easily write your own tool. Even still, I find SQL Server Management Studios to be one of the best front-ends ever made.

Windows Communication Foundation

The primary way to communicate with Minima is the MinimaFacade class. This class is used internally to get the information for the web site. It's also what you should use when writing your own management tool. Looking at the class you will ask yourself "Why in the world isn't this thing static!?". I didn't make it static because I wanted to apply a ServiceContract interface to it thereby giving it exposure as a potential WCF service. The web site, however, does use it statically via the MinimaFacadeCache class. Anyway, the point is, you can easily write your own remote management application using WPF, Winforms, or ASP.NET 2.0 by using WCF. Of course, if you want a secure channel with WCF... that you will have to add on your own as I didn't have an SSL certificate for testing purposes.

Potential Future Changes

There are some things I would definitely like to change in future CTPs of Minima. I have an entire list of things I want to either change, fix, or add. More information is forthcoming.

Primary Features

The primary features in Minima are just the ones that I just HAD to have. If I didn't absolutely need the feature, I probably didn't add it (but may in the future!) A few things I needed are: "fake" paths or archives and labels, "fake" URLs for each blog entry, multiple "fake" URLs for each blog entry (some times I have a typo in a title of a blog entry, but by the time I find out the blog entry is already popular--so I can't merely fix it-- I need two URLs to point to the same thing), almost completely database driven (including URL mappings), labels (not folders!, I wanted many labels per blog entry), pure CSS layout and style, pure XHTML structure, and the ability to add, remove, or change a major feature on a whim! Now that last one is very important... if I want to change something, I can. This ability came in handy when I went from blogger to my own engine and in the process lost my automatic technorati ping. That's something I quickly added though.

Technology

The DAL was generated using LLBLGen using Self-Servicing template in a two-class scenario. Everything was written in C# 2.0 using ASP.NET 2.0 with a few bits of custom AJAX functionality (I didn't want to use Atlas on this one). All style and layout is CSS as only people who are in desperate need of getting fired use tables for layout. The technorati ping functionality is based on an abridgement of my XML service framework. The RSS feed creation abilities is actual a function of the RSS.NET framework. I would have added Atom, but I've had majors problems with the Atom.NET framework in the past. Finally, the database is SQL Server 2005 (Express in my case), using one stored procedure (which I would like to refactor into LLBLGen).

As a Training Tool

One of my intentions regarding Minima is to use it as a sample application for .NET training. For example, this is a great way to demonstrate the power and capabilities of HTTPHandlers. It's also a good example of how LLBLGen can be effectively utilized. Furthermore, it also demonstrates how you can quickly and efficiently use WCF to turn a simple facade into a multi-endpoint service. It also demonstrates manual AJAX, CSS themeing, HttpWebRequest, proper use of global.asax, framework design guidelines, and type organization.

The API

For now, just look at the MinimaFacade and everything should become apparent. I'll be posting API samples in the future. See the Samples section below for some examples on using the API.

Update: Minima is now in the NetFXHarmonics Subversion respository at http://svn.netfxharmonics.com/Minima/tags/.

}