A new build is available that adds a couple of minor features and fixes:

• Added ability to ‘copy’ an item in the File Management Task list
• Added nice new QHTM List Box control for Insert Items dialog and made it sizeable
  
• Added graphics to most dialogs
  
• Improved/Changed task graphics and icons
• Fixed some nasty resource leaks and excessive GDI and memory usage when many progress bars appear within the output window
• Fixed output log not scrolling to the end when new output is added

Don’t forget, please let me know if something isn’t working or requires a change or addition to make BuildIT more useful … I love to hear feedback and it helps focus things.

A friend and colleague of mine recommended this article and it really is very good reading…
How C.R.A.P is Your Site Design?

I certainly will be re-reading it and seeing if I can improve my site with the points Mike Rundle makes.

A new build is available that adds a couple of minor features and fixes:

• Added ability to specify connection and transfer timeouts for GetWebFile object
• Added ability for GetWebFile to follow page redirects automatically and also to handle cookies so that the request will work as expected
• Added new recursive file management abilities, this enables you to copy or move an entire folder structure to a different location (really useful)
• Added FileManagement option to “error” if specified file to copy/move/delete doesnt exist (not available if recursive option is selected)
• Added ability to define and pass in macros to a command line build file: -m==
  For example, you could specify several macros to the one file being executed like this:
  -m=”SOURCE=c:\my test folder\” -m=”DEST=c:\my dest folder\”
• Fixed bug where running an external BuildIT file as a task would only execute the first task
• Fixed bug where macros in GetWebFile werent being expanded

I have been doing a bit of tweaking to BuildIT recently.

One of these things is the ability to specify some timeout values to the Get Web Page task … this allows you to fine tune your tasks so it doesn’t hold up your process, or if it’s a slow server, you can allow it to wait.

The other changes are more internal:

• Follow Redirects: Now the task will follow any redirects (to a maximum of 20) so you can through login pages or other redirected pages.
• Cookie Handling: It also internally handles cookies, so if you passed login information in the URL or Post Data which subsequently set session or permanent cookies for logging-in, then the cookies are used on other pages or any redirects.

These additions should make the Task a lot more useful.

I have installed an interesting application - BlogJet. It’s a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools). Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein

I have been using an old ASP based blog engine called BlogWorksXML … this was in alpha years ago and the author has ceased any and all development, which is a real shame.

I had been suffering from an unmangeable deluge of comment spam for porn and all sorts … this was a real pain to manage due to the way blogworks works and with no improvements on the horizon it was time to pull it all or look for an alternative.

So, I had to look for something that would have the following things; installable on my own server rather than linking off to a different site; e-mail notifications when someone posted a comment, so I know about it and can reply … a few times, some comments had been sitting there for a day or two before I knew about them; multiple trackbacks; moderation/approval of comments and other ways to control spam; I quite like the ability to power it from a GUI like BlogJet so something popular and well know was essential

Now a quick search on google found no decent and still supported (also English written in case I have to get into the code) blog engines using just plain vanilla ASP so I started looking further afield.

My investigations ended with Moveable Type (which although powerful, costs money for anything other than a personal blog which I fear this is not, so that was out), and WordPress … Wow!

Getting the server to a point that I could install WordPress … php and mysql, and together oh what a pain .. install this, unzip that, read google to find out why I am getting errors, setup test pages, configure an ini file, discover that the ini file it actually uses is in c:\windows, try again, modify, test, success! Hurrah!

I then spent a little while, creating my own template/theme so it looks like my current blog and voila, its all cool. And more importantly, its continually supported so I should get any new things that get added.

So, when everything has been fully tested, I will start installing it onto the live server and hopefully do some more blogging again.

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An update … it’s all live now and seems to work fine (once I got over the firewall issues, which is always a pain!)