I switched weblog providers tonight. I had been using Community Server 2.1, but now I'm using Subtext. I much prefer Subtext. When I first began my hunt for ASP.NET powered weblog software a few months ago, I started with .Text. Well, I tried to start with .Text. I remember reading a few blogs that were powered by .Text in my early ASP.NET developer days. I figured that if it was good enough for ASP.NET developers, it'll be good enough to me. Sadly, I couldn't easily find a link to a .Text download/installer. I found the now-defunct godotnet.com workspace, but that didn't offer a download. It also appeared that sadly, .Text development stopped before I touched Visual Studio. Scratch that idea. I poked around the web a bit (even tried WeblogMatrix, sister to WikiMatrix which ignited my love affair with DokuWiki) and couldn't find anything. Then I remembered that worsethanfailure switched over to Community Server a while back, and checked the site. Seemed pretty good. A download and somewhat troubled install later (mostly due to DNS issues, and my desire to host a blog directly on the homepage) I was up and going. It was pretty cool, albeit slow. Granted, the server it was running on was fairly weak and carrying Exchange 2007.
Once I installed Community Server, the CommunityServerApp app pool kept crashing unexpectedly. It appears that whenever the application was recycled, it'd terminate. Since my site is fairly low-load (one or two hits a day), I'd imagine that the application pool would load itself, serve one or two pages, then crash. Whenever I logged into the server over rdesktop, there'd be fifteen+ error messages awaiting. Most annoying, even for a dev server. I tried upgrading to the recent release of Community Server 2007, but that required me to download the web install (documentation well hidden) and run a SQL Script manually (poor form). Not to mention the fact that the Community Server license agreement changed and it was super-overpowered. Seems like solid software, and it works for a lot of people, it's just not what I needed.
I was reading Reddit one day when I came across a link about the Dvorak layout. Now, whenever I go to a new blog I always read the About page before the post, just to see where the user is coming from. Well, apparently, this guy ran a successor to my original choice of .Text. And he knew Jeff Atwood. And he was one of the people who posted in the thread on CodingHorror where I finally got over my fear-of-the-professional-internet and posted a comment. And, on top of that, he uses the Dvorak keyboard layout. All that coolness made me realize that it was time to switch. The Subtext was install was clean and running within fifteen minutes. Porting my old posts (all eleven of them) was done by hand.
Subtext is FAST. Much faster then Community Server. Though I will point out, it has about 1/8th the functionality. Again, just want a ASP.NET/SQL Server based weblog. So Subtext wins. It is now my weblog software of choice. I'll probably have more to say on it after a few more days use. It also supports Windows Live Writer/MetaBlogAPI. Windows Live Writer is pimp. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Note: Windows Live Writer also works for Community Server. The coolness of Subtext is also independent from that of Windows Live Writer.
Print | posted on Saturday, June 09, 2007 4:02 AM