The last week-end I wanted to give a try to the install of the free and open-source content management application, named Orchard. I knew before that Orchard is based on the .NET framework 4.0 and that could cause some issues with my existing blog engine (dasBlog). Nevertheless, I decided to take the chance and to try to make then working together.

First, the deployment. This is really simple as I took the Orchard web which only needs to be copied on the web server. This did not cause any problem.

Then, update of the configuration and this became more difficult. I had to make the blog engine virtual directory to specifically use the .NET 2.0 framework and breaking the inheritance of web.config, using the <location> element. The Orchard install then went almost fine, but the blog was in a very bad state, complaining that the file eurl.axd/[AVeryBigNumber] was not found.

In fact, as soon as you set your IIS root application to run the .NET framework 4.0, no matter the configuration inheritance is broken or using the .NET 2.0 framework using a dedicated application pool, the sub virtual directories detect that the version 4.0 is present. For a complete explanation, please read the ASP.NET 4 breaking-changes whitepaper.

The conclusion of this journey is that I had to revert back to a plain .NET 2.0 runtime in order to have this blog back up and running.

Thanks to the Brinkster support team who spend long time to help me and to try different configurations on the server. But unfortunately, except having another web site, there is no solution, as changing a registry value is of course not possible in such environment.

You may not have notice, but this blog has been upgraded.

As it was running on an old version of the DasBlog engine, it was the time to upgrade to the version 2.3. It is now done and running...

Back to business from some vacations...
First of all, I would like to wish a happy new year and all the best to the readers.

As it is the case every year, people are trying to take resolutions for the new year and I am afraid that I am one of them.
Regarding this blog, I have a couple of points I would like to address this year.

The very first one is to make some cleanup in the blog, such as clearing the spam in the trackbacks and reorganizing the categories.
Then, I would like to upgrade to the last version of the engine, v2.2, released last october.
One goal I would like to achieve this year is to be more active and posting more regularly. Once a week for example. This is going to be quite challenging, I know that already, because the goal is to produce content but not only for the sake of writing stuff.
Finally, and this is something pending since few years now (since I left LooKware in fact), the main web site really needs to be put online. On this side, some work needs to be done to find the right look and feel and also to write the content.

Quite a lot on the plate, and I hope that at the end of 2009, most (all) of the points will be addressed.