I finally decided to have my own blog and chose Blogengine.net as my blog platform. It would be apt for my first blog to be about Blogengine.net. In this blog I will briefly outline the steps I took to install it on Godaddy hosting.
Environment:
Blog platform: BlogEngine.NET 1.5 Final (Download the BlogEngine.NET 1.5 (web) version)
DataProvider: MS SQL 2005
Hosting: GoDaddy Deluxe Account
FTP Client: FileZilla – Its Free!
Code Highlighter:
SyntaxHighlighter 2.0
BE.NET Extension
Windows Live Writer Extension
Installation:
BlogEngine.NET
1. Download and unzip the contents of BlogEngine.Web.zip.
2. Edit the robots.txt, remove the ‘#’ from the last line and replace the text ‘http://example.com/sitemap.axd ’ with your website, add ‘www.’ if you would like. In my case it is ‘http://www.dotnetjunkie.com/sitemap.axd’.
3. Go to your GoDaddy Hosting account and go to Content –> IIS Management. Maksure ‘IIS 7’ is selected, and the runtime is ‘ASP.Net Runtime Version: 2.0/3.0/3.5’, if not click ‘modify’ to change. Next select the ‘console root’ and click ‘Advanced’. Choose ‘Classic’ and click ‘Ok’.
4. If you are using XML to store your data follow this step, create a folder ‘App_Data’ in GoDaddy file manager under the ‘root’ folder and set permissions to ‘read’ and ‘write’. You might have to uncheck ‘inherit’ to set ‘write’ permission. Skip to step 8.
5. If you are using MS SQL, create a database at GoDaddy Hosting –> Database –> SQL Server. Once its created click on ‘Setup’ and then on ‘Configuration’. Copy the connection string ‘SqlConnection (.NET)’ and replace the password with yours.
6. Go to the unzipped folder on your computer BlogEngine.Web –> Setup –> SQLServer and open ‘SQLServerWeb.Config’. Replace the connection string values for ‘BlogEngine’ with the ones from step 5. Rename this file to ‘Web.config’ and replace ‘Web.config’ present in the root of the ‘BlogEngine.Web’ folder.
7. Open and copy the contents of ‘MSSQLSetup1.5.0.0.sql’ from the SQLServer folder from step6. Click on ‘Open Manager’ in your GoDaddy Hosting –> Database –> SQL Server. Login and click on ‘Query Analyzer’ under ‘Tools’. Paste the SQL script into the textbox. Choose the database you want above the textbox and click ‘Excute’. Now you must have all the data tables required by BlogEngine. You can confirm this by clicking ‘Tables’ under your database.
8. Fire up your FTP client and connect with the following details
FTP Server: ftp://www.yourwebsite.com. In my case ftp://www.dotnetjunkie.com
Username and Password: Use your GoDaddy FTP username and password you created when you setup your hosting account .
5. Transfer all the content inside ‘BlogEngine.Web’ folder to your root folder on GoDaddy server. Since you already created ‘App_Data’ in GoDaddy File Manager, transfer the contents from your local ‘App_Data’ to this folder .
6. Open the browser, point to your www.yourwebsite.com. Login using ‘admin’ as username and password. Go to settings under ‘Administration’ create a new user, make yourself an ‘administrator’ and ‘editor’. Log in with your new account and remove the ‘administrator’ and ‘editor’ role for the user ‘admin’. If you want to keep it, make sure to change the password by using ‘Change Password’ under ‘Administration’.
7. Now you are ready to blog away!
SyntaxHighlighter Extension
1. Download the extension from here.
2. Unzip the file and transfer the file ‘SyntaxHighlighter.cs’ from ‘sh2forbe\App_Code\Extensions\’ to ‘App_Code\Extensions\’ on the GoDaddy Server.
3. Transfer ‘SyntaxHighlighter’ folder to your root folder on GoDaddy server.
4. Go to ‘Extensions’ under ‘Administration’ and click ‘Edit’ under ‘Settings’ column for ‘SyntaxHighlighter’. This should open your ‘SyntaxHighlighter’ settings page.
5. If you get an ‘access denied ….js’ error, give write permissions to the folder ‘SyntaxHighlighter’ in GoDaddy File Manager. Now you should be able to access the page.
Windows Live Writer
WLW is a great tool to write blogs on your local computer and publish directly to your website! I highly recommend it. You can download it here. Uncheck the tools you don’t want during installation. Download the ‘SyntaxHighlighter’ plugin for WLW here. You can download the dll and copy right into ‘C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins’.
Now you are all set to do some serious blogging!