The BlogEngine.NET team is pleased to announce that the final version of BlogEngine.NET 1.5 is now available for download. We had a good test run with the release candidate released earlier and after making a few small updates and bug fixes, the final version is ready to go.
As I mentioned in my previous post, this release has some great features and lots of performance improvements and bug fixes that make 1.5 a great upgrade for the existing BlogEngine user and wonderful option for someone just starting out.
The main features are:
- Nested Comments can now be enabled.
- BlogEngine.NET runs on Mono 2.4 out of the box.
- Windows Live Writer support is superb and includes the new tagging feature that only BlogEngine.NET and WordPress support.
- TinyMCE was updated for the web based writer.
You can download it here and then watch the installation screencasts if you need any help getting started.
New version, new screencasts. (Yes, that is plural as I have many screencast ready to go.)
With BlogEngine.NET 1.5 RC being made available, I decided to update the installation screencast and a few of the database setup screencasts that commonly follow.
Installing BlogEngine.NET 1.5 Screencast
Setting up BlogEngine.NET 1.5 with SQL Server
Setting up BlogEngine.NET 1.5 with VistaDB
Setting up BlogEngine.NET 1.5 with SQLite
If you have questions or are running into problems, please check out the BlogEngine.NET forums. There are lots of helpful people there and tons of great information available.
Good luck with your BlogEngine.NET installation.
This evening, the BlogEngine team made the release candidate available for BlogEngine.NET 1.5. This release was a long time in process and we felt is was best to make a release candidate available first.
I’m personally very excited about 1.5. The highlights include:
- Improved Live Writer Support (including the new Tagging feature).
- TinyMCE update
- Ready for Mono 2.4.
- Nested Comments are now available.
- Better database support out of the box.
- and, of course, lots of bug fixes, performance improvements, and other updates to make your blog experience better.
Please download it and give it a spin.
Today, Microsoft announced the new Web Application Gallery where you can browse and install web application right to your web server.
We were honored to have BlogEngine.NET included in the initial release of the gallery and enjoyed working with the team at Microsoft to get it ready for the Mix 09 release.
I made a quick screencast tonight to show you exactly what it is like to install BlogEngine using the new installer. It is now even simpler to get setup with BlogEngine.NET as the installer will check your dependencies and make sure you have everything you need in place to get up and running.
The installer will setup your blog with an XML backend at this time. You can then convert it to use SQL Server, MySQL, SQLite, or VistaDB after you’ve got up and running with XML. We will work on getting more options available for the release of BlogEngine.NET 1.5.
As I’ve stated in the past, I use VistaDB Express to store the data for this blog. I really like the clean gui interface and the fact that it matches the SQL Server data types so well. It has been a pleasure to work with from my perspective.
I have not taken the plunge and purchased a full license as I don’t need it. I have been checking in on VistaDB’s blog and forums however. They have been busy making updates and fixed a minor issue I had been having with the express edition. While the progress was great news, it didn’t help me as the express edition hadn’t received any of these updates. Finally, last week, just a few days as I was planning a workaround to my issue, the updated Express edition was released.
Tonight, I finally got around to updating my blog from VistaDB Express 3.3 to 3.4. The process was pretty simple.
- Backup your blog. Not really needed, but skip at your own peril.
- Download and install VistaDB Express 3.4 to get the updated VistaDB.NET20.DLL.
- Edit your web.config and change the VistaDB assembly from “3.3.1.54” to “3.4.2.77”. My web.config had this in information in 4 places. The DbProviderFactories section, the runtime section, and the system.web assemblies section.
- Upload and overwrite the edited web.config (root) and the VistaDB.NET20.DLL (Bin folder).
There aren’t a lot of benefits to the this update that you’ll notice in BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5, but BlogEngine.NET 1.5 setup will be expecting the latest version in the default config.