Jwendl.NET

I wanted a feature similar to this for quite some time. Really it is one of the things that I missed from WordPress. The ability to take LaTeX (like ) based sequences and convert them to .png to display on my blog. You will also need to note that I did this on a self hosted environment, you may have to check with your hosting provider first to see if this will work for you. Here are the steps I took to achieve this:

1. Download MikTex portable from http://www.miktex.org/portable/about
2. Extract the zip file to a folder on your server (I chose c:\Tools)
3. Setup your IIS User in Windows (NOT IIS) to have Read+Execute permissions on the above folder
4. Make sure you are setup in Full Trust
5. Download the extension attached to this post into your ~/App_Code/Extensions folder
6. Setup the directory paths properly
7. Make sure the output directory is Read+Write permissions for your IIS User (in both Windows and IIS)

More...

I have changed my default theme for BlogEngine. I am using a variation of the "Bright Side of Life" theme. I plan on creating a few extensions too like my RandomHeader (look at the header image) control.

Every time I go deeper into the BlogEngine code base I am caught off guard at how well thought out the abstraction layers are. The ExtensionManager is another layer that helps people who build Extensions have a place to administrate their extension. If you don't want to use the default Settings class holder, you can use a custom administration page.

http://rtur.net/blog/post/2008/01/Documentation-on-Extension-Manager.aspx

I am going to have to put this to good use with my RandomQuotes extension that I am trying to make work.

This BlogEngine instance uses the Asp.NET Membership Provider, and it was actually quite easy to convert. Big kudos to the team who has worked on this Blog software.

Comment out this code inside Web.config

  <membership defaultProvider="XmlMembershipProvider" >
    <providers>
      <clear />
      <add name="XmlMembershipProvider" type="BlogEngine.Core.Providers.XmlMembershipProvider, BlogEngine.Core" description="XML membership provider" xmlFileName="~/App_Data/users.xml"/>
    </providers>
   </membership>

   <roleManager defaultProvider="XmlRoleProvider" enabled="true" cacheRolesInCookie="true" cookieName=".BLOGENGINEROLES">
    <providers>
      <clear />
      <add name="XmlRoleProvider" type="BlogEngine.Core.Providers.XmlRoleProvider, BlogEngine.Core" description="XML role provider" xmlFileName="~/App_Data/roles.xml"/>
    </providers>
   </roleManager>

Replace it with this code

  <membership defaultProvider="SqlMembershipProvider">
    <providers>
      <add name="SqlMembershipProvider"
          type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider"
          connectionStringName="BlogEngine"
          applicationName="JwendlBlog"
          minRequiredPasswordLength="5"
          minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" />
    </providers>
   </membership>

   <roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="SqlRoleProvider">
    <providers>
      <add connectionStringName="BlogEngine" name="SqlRoleProvider"
          applicationName="JwendlBlog"
          type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider" />
    </providers>
   </roleManager></pre></div>

Then you have to install the ASP.NET Membership SQL Registration program. Best described at this URL http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/040506-1.aspx

This was almost all you need to do to finish the conversion. The problem is that you need to now setup a default user of some sort. This can be easy, or hard depending on how the WSAT installed your instance. Please read up on ASP.NET membership before you attempt to convert over. I had to manually set the roles up on the proper application and user inside the aspnet_UsersInRoles table. After that, login with the default user and everything works just fine.

The reason why this works is because the XmlMembershipProvider class inherits the MembershipProvider class that ASP.NET provides. This means that all of the functions that BlogEngine uses for authentication are extensible to any custom membership provider that you can dream of.

I have created a BlogEngine extension for all of you World of Warcraft enthusiasts out there. This extension basically replaces [ wowid:22589 ] or [ wowtext:Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian ] with Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian and Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian respectfully. It uses the latest Wowhead javascript library that they suggest the community uses for this sort of thing.

Installation is easy, just drop the WowItemLink.cs into your ~/App Code/Extensions folder and upload onto your web host. It will work on both Pages and Posts. I have tested it with the majority of inputs that I can, but I am certain there are bugs with it. If you find any please post here and I will look into it.

WowItemLink.cs (3.37 kb)