To set up the blogging infrastructure for this website, I installed DasBlog v.1.8.6025.3. The process was pretty painless - unzip the files, upload them into a folder onto the web server, make that folder a Web Application in IIS and set a few permissions on "writable" folders. No database connections to fuss with - it just worked out of the box. A lot of prominent bloggers use DasBlog including Scott Hanselman and Canada's very own Kate Gregory.

Note that I'm hosting this blog on an IIS 7.0 server and I initially got an error that the application had to run in Classic Pipeline Mode instead of Intregrated mode. As soon as I flipped the bit - the site worked fine. Mike Volodarsky has an excellent article on how to create an ASP.NET site that is compatible in both Integrated and Classic Mode. Once I get a few cycles, I'll make the changes and create a post about it.

Next step in the process was customizing the UI. I chose the "business" theme. Here is what the directory structure looks like:

homeTemplate defines the "look and feel" of the page as a whole. This is where your Classic ASP skills come into play - John Forsythe posted a very useful set of DasBlog macros you can plug into the template. itemTemplate defines exactly what will be shown in every post - I've added support for a number of social networking sites including Digg and Technorati. Of course, theme.css can be used to customize colors in the theme and positioning. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the makeover.

If you are interested in achieving the same results, I've posted my templates on my SkyDrive. Also found what appears to be two minor bugs with DasBlog:

• If I try to enter a very long URL into the text editor, it gets shortened which results in malformed HTML. I've been using shrinkster to mitigate this problem.
• My SkyDrive won't embed on the blog. Works perfectly on my homepage however.