Get a free licensed review copy

Posted by James Shaw at 4:22pm

Monday, November 29th

Michael Hyatt (via Scoble) is absolutely right. Software companies should make it very easy for people to talk about their products.

That's why I gave every ASP Insider a free copy of the Dozing Dogs CMS, and offered a heavy discount to every fellow Microsoft MVP.

So, to take it one step further, here's a new offer.

If you run a blog or web site aimed at anyone that may possibly want to purchase our CMS, you qualify for a free fully licensed Personal Edition.

Just let us know where to find your blog or web site..

1 Month Anniversary

Posted by James Shaw at 2:40pm

Today, September 23rd

This is kinda scary. I returned from the ASP Insiders event at Microsoft just one month ago. It was at this event that Dozing Dogs and CoverYourASP.NET was born.

We're still refactoring the OurLittleNet codebase to remove the OurLittleNet-ness of it (you know, the hard-coded support@ourlittle.net emails, the hard-coded content on ASPX pages), but we're getting very close now.

And we've added blogs to the mix just like you're reading now. And Master Pages. But generally made a lot of great changes that you're going to love. It's unlike any CMS that I've seen before, and I hope you agree that's a good thing.

I can't believe it's been just 30 days.

The next 39 days are going to be just as hard I suspect. Just as well I like writing because there is just a "smidge" of documentation that needs doing...

Posted by James Shaw at 7:35am

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone." - Pablo Picasso

Like I need more pressure! 39 days to go.

Quote seen on Tom Peters' site - yet another great link from Scoble. I know you see me Robert.

Look Geppetto, I'm a real blog!

Posted by James Shaw at 4:01pm

Thursday, September 16th

For the last few weeks I've been blogging by writing more text in default.htm and uploading it. Now, more than ever, do I appreciate how much easier life is with a CMS!

Today I uploaded our Dozing Dogs CMS product and configured it to just show this blog and not much else. Doesn't look too different to yesterday, does it? But, oh, it is, in so many ways!

First, of course, you can now subscribe!

The RSS format takes a lot from http://www.coveryourasp.net/eu.aspx?url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.ASPRSS.com since (not surprisingly) that's where I took the code from, but it works perfectly in all the aggregators I've tried. I don't have the time to even think whether I "should" use RSS 0.9, 1.x, 2.x or whatever the latest is, but for blogs I doubt it really matters.

Blogs anyone? ;-)

Posted by James Shaw at 3:40pm

Wednesday, September 8th

Back to real productive work today. Since I needed a blog for this site I have spent a few hours designing and implementing blogs using my existing Content class with an extra couple of user controls. I'm pleased how easy it was. I have a few more hours to finish it off, then you'll be able to drop a control on a page to either show the latest entry in all blogs on the site, or the entries in one blog over a given time period. So your President and support, sales and marketing departments could all have a blog on your new Dozing Dogs CMS-powered web site.

Pretty cool actually.

URL rewriting - kinda

Posted by James Shaw at 3:39pm

Tuesday, September 7th

When I wanted friendly URL's way back in the early beta ASP.NET 1.0 days there wasn't much known about HttpHandlers and HttpModules, so I implemented my version just as I had in Classic ASP; using a custom 404 handler.

Ever since I have had dreams of converting over to the latest and greatest method, thinking that everyone I hear talking about it must have a very clean system by now. Not quite!

I read about Scott's method, and the other Scott and Eli's too. Then there was Jesse's and IanG's. Basically the cream of the ASP.NET crop documenting various levels of hacking ASP.NET. No offense, but not really any better than my solution when you consider postbacks and other subtleties like Server.Transfer.

But I gave it a good shot anyway, spending a day to take the best of .Text and the other articles. I got it working, mostly, but at the end of the day I decided to rip it out and keep what I know works. Perhaps in v1.5 I'll revisit this.

Why? I'm a big fan of proven code. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. My solution does not require that you pipe every file type (including images) through ASP.NET like an HttpHandler solution would require, but more to the point, it already works 5 million times a month.

What does CMS mean to you?

Posted by James Shaw at 3:34pm

Sunday, August 29th

What does "CMS" mean to you? I don't mean what do the initials stand for, I mean what do you expect from a CMS? I ask because I've come across two types of CMS; those that allow the web designer to create and edit a web site easily and those that allow the customer to edit the web site once it is online.

To me, the value in a CMS is allowing the customer to add content to their web site without the need for a web designer. So I am suspicious when I see a tool (that calls itself a CMS) publishing what is essentially a static web site.

It's true, a few tools do a fine job of allowing the customer to easily change and republish a static web site; Fog Creek Software's City Desk being the obvious choice. But personally, I prefer my CMS a little more dynamic - Dozing Dogs' CMS allows unlimited users to create unlimited content online (if you desire) since it was an leading example of "Open Source Journalism" and encouraged members of a community to express themselves.

What do you think a CMS should include?  james@shawthing.com

Rename, rename, rename

Posted by James Shaw at 3:24pm

Saturday, August 28th

Although OLN is a complete, proven CMS (it serves over 5 million pages each month) it is quite another thing to make into a sales-worthy product. So we're busy refactoring the code to generalize it even further.

So far, a whole day was spent on just renaming namespaces and classes from OLN to DozingDogs. Then another few hours were spent on incorporating MetaBuilders beautifully simple Master Pages code and adding some more public methods to it. Kudos to fellow ASPInsider Andy Smith for sharing the source, and to friend Dave Wanta for reminding me about it. ;-)