I'll let you guess which one I think is the dog.

I have a hard time recommending a .Net blog engine that is comparable to WordPress in features, ease of use, cost and polish. Frequently I’m recommending to clients who have .Net sites that are looking add a blog to just add WordPress. This will usually require the .Net site has some complexities that aren’t easily transferable (i.e. It’s not just a corporate informational site with static content that is easily transferable to WordPress all together) and that you will have reasonable control over the server environment (no cheap shared hosting environments headaches).

I’m going to be attaching a blog to the APS Job Board which is a little project we are running to keep the people of Chicago (and the US) employed or employed with jobs they actually like. It’s built using the latest and greatest for Microsoft web development (SQL Server, MVC3, Razor layouts, etc.). I poked around looking for some good blogging open source goodness with aspNet MVC3 and the options just aren’t there or mature enough in my opinion. *cough* WebFunnel *cough*

A big benefit of doing it this way it to keep the traffic with your blog and your website integrated. You want to avoid having traffic for your blog on it’s own domain, or a subdomain (i.e. apsjobboardblog.com or blog.absjobboard.com).

One of the major drawbacks would be having to manage the design of the site in two independent code bases, although I think this is the case even with .Net blogging engine options. You will also need 2 developer skills sets if you are looking to do fancy, custom custom stuff with both sides of the application – or one good web firm like APS for instance!

If you didn’t know WordPress will actually run quite nicely on the MS Web Stack. You can even use MS SQL Server instead of MYSQL if you like – which makes the data more accessible to your .Net portions of the site. For the purposes of this tutorial we will be using Windows Server 2008, IIS7, and the MS Web Platform Installer.

Save yourself some pain, and just make sure you have no MySQL server instances previously installed, reboot and stop IIS. Then just simply select WordPress and install via the MS Web Platform Installer tool. It will install MySQL by default, and just go through the steps.

Now in IIS7 go to your .Net web site and create a virtual directory. You can call it whatever you want – but let’s call it “blog” because we like to use common sense here at APS. Set the home directory to your new WordPress website home directory.

Just right click your web app and add a virtual directory. Point it to your new WP blog website root.

There is a final step to make the integration seamless and that is to set your WordPress address (URL) and Site address (URL) to your .Net application’s domain and blog path.

Viola! By the powers invested in me, I now pronounce your .Net website and WordPress blog bound in unholy matrimony.

Create a tree? That's easy ..

Just to prove I broke Google:

Thanks Google, for nothing ...

I still haven’t got to the root of the issue, but my development environment is on a Mac, Snow Leopard 10.6.6, and GitX 0.7.1.

The work around was to clone the remote repository on Github again locally, or to simply copy and paste the working directory in finder. The duplicate directory doesn’t encounter this error on commit.

Hopefully someone will find this and it will save them some time down the road … If I can help but one lost programming soul a couple of hours, then all this blogging fuss would have been worth it.

I’ve been doing a lot of business development lately.  A large portion of my day is sifting through requisitions, websites, and resources to find suitable work – preferably work that is aligned with my goals as a small business owner.   There are lots of considerations such as rate, the industry, and potential for long term commitment that come into play.  I’d much rather be working on a project and coding with my colleagues, but it comes with the territory when you run your own web firm.  It’s tedious work, but considering the alternative such as paying a sales guy, or using a recruiter – it’s currently the lesser or evils.

I’ve always avoided recruiters.  On my list of least favorite things they rank slightly above offshore web development and toll booths.  The idea of someone getting 30 percent (or more) of my compensation when they typically don’t know much about my field is difficult to stomach.  My favorite recent quote in dealing with a recruiter after I inquired about their take was, “We don’t discuss percentages with talent”.   Really?  You would think the potential to make 30k on a single connection would be worth more effort than that.  In my experiences they typically have very little knowledge of technology other than what they have gleaned from their cold calling routines.  I understand that most people in my field aren’t particularly socially adept so they can use a little help when it comes to networking and presenting your skills in the best light.  Yet I’ve never once heard of recruiter help with a resume (other than asking for YOU to adjust it for the position), provide a laptop, training, or even coach you through an interview process.  I’m sure it doesn’t make sense for them because that all requires time and it’s much easier to shuffle resumes of multiple candidates for a position than to actually enable a candidate.  A recruiters job is to present as many candidates as possible for the clients who pay their bills – not to find the right job for a candidate.   It’s a capitalist economy – so fair enough.

I guess my main beef is the compensation.  30% ?!?  I’ve seen instances where it’s closer to half.  I can’t think of another sales professional where the amount of work performed constitutes those percentages.  Real estate agents can get around 6 percent for the sale of house.  Elite enterprise software sales guys get 3 to 8 percent commission on their quotas.  Where is the precedent for this percentage?

My other gripe is with the companies that enable this market to exist in the first place – particularly with contract work.  If you are a company in need of web talent, why wouldn’t you just negotiate with a firm or freelancer directly?  Do you really think it’s good business to put 30% percent of your budget to a finders fee?

So freelancers of Chicago unite!  Grab your pitchforks and torches and keep the recruiters at bay.  Try a little cold calling yourself, pass out a few business cards, and do a little more networking.

Honestly, if needed, I think I’d be better off with Ben Affleck as my recruiter – at least I might get a retainer out of the deal.

I just rebooted the website design for the third time in 2 years and chose WordPress as the blogging platform of choice. All content management systems are evil in there own way but I’m navigating my way around pretty well for being a Microsoft .Net lackey for most of my career. I’ve managed to hack up this template pretty good for never coding in PHP until this weekend. It reminds me a lot of classic MS active server pages actually. I think I’m a bit of a rare bird as you won’t find many developers who are well versed with Microsoft, work on a Mac, and has some Ruby on Rails contract work under his belt. Anyways I got everything up an running and most of my content transferred in a day of work over the weekend. Not bad.

I’m am looking forward to sharing experiences and ideas and bring my patented brand of shy, awkward and anti social online. God knows I have some kind of record for using information and code samples from every blog on the internet without contributing anything. So here is to turning that around and starting anew.

Cheers!