Weblog Applications

I am now generating RSS feeds for each category.

I've been almost completely out of the loop on weblogs, RSS, syndication, etc. for the past few weeks, so I am just now starting to digest Necho.

My first pass at having my weblog app generate an Necho file is here.

For those of you with weblogs of your own, I am sure you are already well familiar with BlogShares, so I won't spend any time explaining it here. If you aren't familiar with it, click the link and check it out.

What I really want to tell you about is that my weblog is finally trading on BlogShares.

Well, I've nearly implemented all of the functionality needed for me to use w.bloggar with my weblog app. Honestly, implementing these XML-RPC API's is such a pain in my ass. It just seems so backwards compared to building web services in .NET.

Oh well, what's done is done.

Back in the early days of my weblog app, I came across Charles Cook's excellent XML-RPC.NET library and used it to ping weblogs.com whenever there was a new post.

Now, I think I will delve into it once again -- this time to implement the MetaWeblogAPI and the BloggerAPI.

This is so cool. Sit back and watch the world blog its way around the clock. Now you know you simply must get those geotags and that RSS autodiscovery machinery into your blog.
[Sean McGrath, CTO, Propylon]

I mentioned earlier that I was going to start on this this past weekend, but better late than never. Anyway, I've begun to play around with implementing search functionality for the weblog. At the moment it is a very basic search that matches everything entered, and only the body of an entry is searched.

You can see it for yourself over at what is becoming the testing ground for this site.

Of course I've got a few things to work out still, but the search functionality should find it's way into production shortly.

Does anyone implement search on their blogs? The .NET weblog systems I have seen don't, neither does Radio. But Sam Ruby's does. I would think that search would be a useful feature. Is it? If not, why not?
[Harry Pierson's DevHawk Weblog]

Previously, I discussed using the ASP.NET Calendar Control as an additional means of navigating my archives.

Since then, there has been a lot of talk about what is the best (or preferred) method for presenting archives and navigating them, and it seems that most people don't care for the calendar method (at least not as the only method).

Personally, I do like the Calendar method for navigating, as long as it isn't the only method. I especially like the ability to select a range of dates using the ASP.NET Calendar Control -- such as everything for a month, week, or day, so you aren't forced to click each individual day to view posts.

Anyway, I've always provided the ability to navigate archives by month using the simple Archives list you see on this page. I even show the number of posts for a given month. Prior to right now, clicking a link in the Archive list would display all the posts, in their entirety for that month. Now, I list only the titles of each post and provide a link to each individual post, as others have done.

I am not sure which presentation method I prefer. When you click an Archive link for a specific month, do you want to have all the posts right there in front of you, or do you prefer just to see their titles, and perhaps even a summary?

What is the best way to implement referrer tracking in a home-grown weblog?
[Harry Pierson's DevHawk Weblog]

This was pretty quick and dirty, well not dirty, but quick. Anyway, I've been thinking of other ways to display the referrer information, and keep coming back to a hierarchical view, where I display the referring domains, and then drill down to view data on the specific referring URL's.

Of course, I am always looking for a better way...