I started this new blog site about a month ago – my first post was on July 13th, 2008.  I initially decided to use Das Blog as my blogging platform.  My reasons for this choice were quite simple.  I wanted a platform that was based on .NET and was Open Source Licensed so I could extend it as necessary.  Unfortunately, while there are improvements in process, the core DNN Blog module did not meet my needs.

I also wanted a platform that did not require me to add SQL Server to my hosting account so I could sign up for a cheap monthly plan.  Finally, the platform had to support Windows Live Writer.

After a brief review, I came to the conclusion that Das Blog would be able to handle my needs – after all Scott Hanselman is a member of the Das Blog development team and runs his site on it.  After using Das Blog, though for a few weeks, I have run into a few issues. 

I am not a designer, and I was looking for a theme for my site.  I was underwhelmed by the choices available.  I decided to start out with the Voidclass theme and see if I could tweak it for my needs.  It has a major deficiency of being a variable width theme which became a challenge for me with “pre-formatted” code and text wrapping around images, which caused issues depending on the users screen resolution.

Another issue was that DasBlog uses only one variable – category - for taxonomy, whereas many other platforms use both hierarchical categories and tags (or keywords), and after a few posts I found this to be a drawback in organizing my content..

Finally, Das Blog seems to be showing its age, and I couldn’t find good support for new “technologies” like, for instance, LightBox – for displaying images.

None of these issues were mission-critical, but I decided to do some more research.  I have for a few months now been a subscriber to Mads Kristensen’s blog - .NET slave.  Mads is the creator of BlogEngine.NET.  I knew this was an ASP.NET based blogging platform, but for some reason had not seriously considered it during my initial review – probably as I assumed it was SQL Server based.

One day last week in the course of researching “Lightbox” extensions for Windows Live Writer, as I was thinking of creating my own extension for Das Blog, I found a post by Peter Provost, where he discussed moving his blog from Das Blog to BlogEngine.NET for many of the same reasons I had.

So, here we are.  I decided to move, before my blog become too big and over the weekend I moved to the latest version of BlogEngine.NET.  It is a native ASP.NET 2.0 application, written in C#, rather than a port of another platform or a fork.  It uses a similar provider model to DNN for data access and has both an XML provider and a SQL Server provider. 

It is hosted on codeplex, and the team seems to be releasing every six weeks or so.  The theme I am using is based on a standard theme, available for download from the software’s main site. (see credits at bottom of page)  The theme looks good to my design-challenged eyes and I have tweaked it with some icons from www.FamFamFam.com. In addition I have added the Lightbox 2 extension, which I will be using on my image-heavy travelogues – most of which I have not ported across yet – as I need to resize the images.

Welcome to my new Blog.  I have been writing blog posts for a few years now on my Dotnetnuke.com Blog.   These posts by design are related to my work on DotNetNuke.

More recently I have been wanting to post more personal blog posts and more generic software development posts, such as posts about the new ASP.NET MVC platform, which interests me, not just because my son Andrew is an intern with that development team.

A few months ago, I launched a site – www.dnndevzone.com – where I intended to create more detailed material on DotNetNuke development.  I have owned the domain name charlesnurse.com for a few years now – I grabbed it while it was available, with no immediate intentions for using it – and so now I have decided to merge the content I have developed for dnndevzone with other content I intend to post at this new Blog site. 

Once I move all the content from dnndevzone, I will shut down that site and focus all my efforts here.

What to expect?

You can expect to find posts on this site on all matters of software development, focusing on ASP.NET in general and DotNetNuke in particular.  I will continue to blog on the DotNetNuke.com site and will cross-post most DotNetNuke material.

In addition, though, on this site you can expect to see posts about my other interests/activities:

• Genealogy – I am an avid genealogist (family history researcher), and have traced my Nurse line as far back as the early 1700’s in North Somerset, England.  On one of my maternal lines I have traced with about 90% certainty my line back to Major Patrick Gordon – a scion of the Gordon Clan, and Lieutenant-Governor of Philadelphia during the 1730’s.
• Travel – I enjoy traveling, and now my kids are adults, with their own lives to lead, I hope to be able to indulge this passion more.
• Dancesport – or Ballroom Dancing.  My wife and I met and competed together as amateur ballroom dancing competitors and I am still involved as a Professional Dancesport Scrutineer (I calculate the results from the judges marks).
• Anglican/Episcopal Church – I am an active Anglican (Episcopalian for the Americans), and I am involved in the Anglican Church of Canada, at the parish level, diocesan level (I am a member of the Diocesan Council of the Diocese of New Westminster, and webmaster of the Diocese’s web-site – its a DNN site of course) and the National Church, where I serve on the Communications and Information Resources Committee.
• Sport – I grew up in the West Country of England and I am a keen follower and supporter of Football (soccer that is) and Rugby.