I've updated my DasBlog to version 2.2.8252.15582 and it has OpenID support! If you have an OpenID you can now use that for posting comments to my blog. I'm not taking the same stand as Aaron Hockley though, refusing to comment on blogs without OpenID support (at least not yet...).

So why use OpenID except from identifying yourself on my blog? The number one reason as I see it is that you have one ID to identify yourself across multiple web sites. This will remove the need for "forgot your password?" links, your favorite pet etc. Also that you rely on one provider for your id that you trust (hopefully) and don't have to "give away" passwords, which you probably only have a few of, using them on all the different accounts you're creating around the Internet.

When you sign into a site using OpenID you get redirected to your provider for authentication. Here you can choose how much information you want to submit about yourself to the site you're logging on to. E.g. you may chose to send no information at all, just your name or email etc.

If you want to know more about OpenID and how it works, check out openid.net. Scott Hanselman has a Weekly Source Code edition of OpenID and also a podcast.

Don't have OpenID? I use myOpenId.com where I've also added my domain (torresdal.net), allowing me to use that instead of [myname].myopenid.com. My id is jon.torresdal.net. Another popular way of using your ID is to map it to your web site. Below is an example from my web site using myopenid.com:

    <link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />
    <link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://torresdal.myopenid.com/" />
    <link rel="openid2.local_id" href="http://torresdal.myopenid.com" />
    <link rel="openid2.provider" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />
    <meta http-equiv="X-XRDS-Location" 
          content="http://www.myopenid.com/xrds?username=torresdal" />

This way I can use blog.torresdal.net as my id. However, one side effect of this is that many blog engines use the name before the dot as your name. If I use my blog url as identifier on e.g. a blog hosted by blogger.com, the comment will say "blog said...", which is not very helpful.

I mentioned myopenid.com, but there are several other suppliers out there. Just Google openid and you'll find many.

PS! All comments to this blog post is expected to use OpenId!

When I moved my blog from Blogger to DasBlog I wanted to keep rss.xml and atom.xml, and redirect them to the new DasBlog url’s. I googled a bit but didn’t find much. And the ones I found I wasn’t able to use (maybe because I’m running Vista RC2). Anyway, last night enough was enough and I decided to put this to an end. I started to look at IIS’s config file applicationHost.config (usually found at C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config) and one section got my attention: <httpRedirect enabled="false" />

The problem was finding schema documentation for this element. After a while I found this (http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=2&subtabid=25&i=946&p=24). To solve my problem I used this:

<httpRedirect     enabled="true"

exactDestination="true”

httpResponseStatus="Permanent">

        <add      wildcard="/rss.xml"

destination="/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss" />

        <add      wildcard="/atom.xml"

destination="/SyndicationService.asmx/GetAtom" />

</httpRedirect>

So if you have a similar problem I hope this helps.

Update:
I upgraded to Vista Release and suddenly the redirect didn't work anymore. I tried and tried and tried and gave up. I tried again and came over this:

That nailed it. Don't know why I didn't see this before, but it would be nice though if the error message said something about enabling this feature.

I mentioned earlier that I was playing with DasBlog, but had some problems getting it running on Windows Vista. Well now I’m live with my new DasBlog site (v 1.9.6315.0)! I have made some changes to the layout and added some new graphics, so if you’re reading my rss take a look at my new site to get the “real” experience. Talking about rss I have now a new rss url (http://blog.torresdal.net/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss). The old rss and atom feeds are still there, but they only provide a link to the new rss feed. Hope you like my new site.

Last week I created a new blog powered by DasBlog. In order to use it you need to have some knowledge of html and CSS. .Net might come in handy as well. I guess most bloggers who are using DasBlog are developers, but it’s not restricted to developers.

Here is what I did to set up my blog:

1. Downloaded the source for DasBlog at http://sourceforge.net/projects/dasblogce
2. Unzipped the binaries. I did not use the source, but you can do that as well.
3. In the unzipped folder I found readme.rtf, which basically tells you exactly what I’m telling you now.
4. I then started the vb script file CreateDasBlogVdir.vbs. This script prompts you for a virtual directory and then sets everything up in IIS.
5. After that I had to change the password for the admin user by editing the file dasblogce\SiteConfig\siteSecurity.config. Look for the tags.
6. Now I could run DasBlog with http://localhost/DasBlog.
7. I then used the admin user with my new password to start configuring DasBlog.
8. The last thing I did was to create my own theme by copying an existing theme and tweaked existing CSS files, creating my own graphics and so on.
   

I found the theme Elegante which I though was quite nice, but I tweaked it a bit. Here is an overview of the file structure for this theme (I only show the most important files):

dasblogce
+ SiteConfig
- site.config
- siteSecurity.config
+ themes
+ YourTheme
- dayTemplate.blogtemplate
- homeTemplate.blogtemplate
- itemTemplate.blogtemplate
- admin.css
- base.css
- items.css
- rightSide.css
- theme.manifest
- web.config

File descriptions
site.config - Contain all configuration settings. Same as Configuration tab in DasBlog admin.

siteSecurity.config - Use this file to change admin password and add new users. This is also available in the User Settings tab in DasBlog admin.

dayTemplate.blogtemplate - Contain the date header for all blog items published on the same day.

homeTemplate.blogtemplate - Her you’ll see the complete structure of the site. If you want to change where the different elements are displayed (e.g. put the navigation menu on the left side), you can do this here.

itemTemplate.blogtemplate - This contains the structure of every blog item (post). Make changes here to alter the structure of information in a blog post. E.g. make changes that go beyond CSS.

CSS files - All descent themes have CSS files. You can either create you own set of CSS files and use them in the *.blogtemplate files, or you can change existing CSS files to your liking.

theme.manifest - This file is very important. Without it your theme will not work. DasBlog is looking for manifest files under the themes folder when it collects all available themes. Have a look at it and you’ll see it’s quite intuitive.

Issues
I had some issues while setting everything up. The first problem was while clicking trough the available themes to see if I found any I liked. When I selected the Mobile theme, I was unable to change to another theme. The Mobile theme did not display a dropdown for changing themes as the others did. If you have a look at site.config file, you’ll see that it contains a <theme> tag which holds the current theme. Change this to a theme of your liking.

My second issue was figuring out how to remove the themes dropdown. I didn’t want this on my site, so I change the file homeTemplate.blogtemplate. As I mentioned earlier this contains the base structure of the site, so if you want to do any structural changes, this is the place.

The last and most important issue (which is still not resolved) is publishing DasBlog to Windows Vista. As you know (because you red this post), I’m running my blog on Windows Vista Beta 2 and IIS 7. It seems as DasBlog is trying to access some registry information about the current time zone and are denied access. I guess I’ll just install the source and see what I can find out, but that have to be some other time. For now I’ll have to continue using Blogger. It’s fine, but as a developer it’s nice to have a bit more control and options. And I also liked all the features in DasBlog which is not available in Blogger.

Right now I’m working on getting a new blog up and running with DasBlog. I’m not dissatisfied with Blogger, but I rather like the idea of having complete control of the blog source and binaries on my own server. I also like the idea of DasBlog being open source. I haven’t had too much time playing around with it yet, but I’ll try to be up and running with a new blog during this week.