The migration process is smooth and mainly breaks  in 4 steps for me On safer side, I stimulate the migration process on my PC before finally performing on this site.

Step 1. Migration starts with a fresh installation of WordPress on targeting server/computer. It is simple and detailed installation instructions can be found here. My blog is hosted on Godaddy and it provides a easy installation of WordPress. You can also check your hosting provider for this.

Step 2. DasBlog to BlogML Converter – This is a GUI tool which will generate the BlogMl from your dasBlog posts.  To give a brief overview – BlogML main goal is to provide the ability to port between different blog engines.

At the time of this migration, I don’t see any utility which can directly migrate dasBlog to WordPress. I’ve first migrated it to BlogML and then from BlogML to WordPress. and backup.

Step 3. Now you have to import this BlogML to newly setup wordpress.  I used this plugin (BlogML-WordPress-Import) of wordpress. You should know how to install wordpress plugin to use this.
(But before import you might want to configure the “Permalinks” (under Settings) as you desired. If you do this before importing posts, you can benefit with a file that contains the old and corresponding new Urls. This information can be used for 301 Redirects.)

4. You will have to place the attachments and images manually on the right path on server. Also don’t forget static pages and any extra stuff that you may want to move with new blog. You can also set the 301 Redirects, this will ensure that traffic from links point to right post on your blog. To set this up open .htaccess file and add your old and new link (Make sure you add full ‘New Link’  (with http://www.yourdomain.com).) as follows-

redirect 301 /dir1/old_link.aspx  http://www.yourdomain.com/new_link

The above four steps conclude the migration process. Easy it was.

List of Last.Fm Recent Tracks

This macro will show a list of recent tracks that was listened by you and scrobbled by Last.fm. This macro is for only who have signed up at last.fm.

List of Last.Fm Top Artist

This macro will show the list of Top Artist that you listened to this week. Again, this macro is for only who have signed up at last.fm.

Show a Shoutbox

This macro will add a shoutbox to dasBlog. Features included-
XML Database – (All entries are stored in XML File. It can be kept under the content directory of blog)
Ajax Enabled – No Iframe or refreshing of whole page. Update shoutbox silently and regularly after specified interval.
Customizable CSS – I tried to make it very customizable. It can gel with any theme perfectly.

Visit http://www.aakashjain.com/stuff/dasblog+macros.aspx for full description with installation instructions.

Finally, I found Akismet is one other good (may be best) service which is helping the bloggers to fight SPAM. “Akismet is an automated spam blocking service which blocks Spam as it learns from its users/community marking SPAM Comments as “SPAM”. Luckily, dasBlog (my blog runs on dasBlog engine.) have implemented the Akismet service and can be enabled by entering the API Key under “Configuration” of dasBlog. Anyone, using dasBlog can enable this service as shown in picture below.

(You need to enter the API Key box – How to get Akismet API Key)

It’s been two months I am using their service and I am very happy with it. I like them so much (possibly I’m so confident now) that, now I am deleting any SPAM straightaway without moderation. I found Akismet most effective than CAPTCHA and Blacklist IPs. What are you people using?

On the best part, this macro uses Ajax to update the entries. It can refresh itself after a specified interval using Ajax calls. You can disable this behavior if you don’t want to update it silently. I have used XML to store the entires in a file on the webserver. So there is no need to bother about database. To make the look and feel for more controlled and customizable, I have added CSS support to shoutbox.

Here are few steps that will help you to add this macro to your blog. But before download macro and extract the zip file on your hard-drive.

1. After extracting, copy aakashjain.dll into the bin directory of your blog.

2. Now, edit the web.config file of your dasBlog application to make the following changes.

a) Uncomment or Add the following code in the <configuration>/<configSections> of web.config file.

b) Add or uncomment the following lines under the <configuration>.

c) Add  the following line under the <httpHandlers> section of web.config.

d) One more setting is to be done. We need to tell dasBlog about the XML file where our entries will be stored. For this you have to create a key under <configuration>

The above piece of code add a key “AakashJainShouts” to specify the location of XML file in which all entries of shoutbox will be saved. I have chosen content directory to save the xml file in the code above. You can specify any directory on the webserver but make sure it should have write permission.
Now add the following line in your homeTemplate.blogtemplate file at a suitable place where you want shout-box to appear. (You can find this file in the current theme folder of your blog.)

<%AjShoutBox(max char,refresh interval,max entries)|AJmacros%>

Here is the description of each parameter,

max char (int) – Maximum number of characters allowed to enter in the message textbox of shoutbox. For name this is fixed to 30 characters.

refresh interval (int) – Enter the number of seconds when the shoutbox will update from new server. If you want to disable this feature enter anything less than 5.

max entries (int) – Maximum number of entries shown at a time in shout-box.

For instance – <%AjShoutBox(150,50,30)|AJmacros%>
(In this example shoutbox will be refreshed in 50 seconds, upto last 30 entries will be shown and only upto 150 characters can be entered in the message.)

Now lets move to style part of shoutbox. After the above settings you would like to apply some styles and colors to shoutbox to match with your blog theme. For this matter I have kept all style related code in a separate style-sheet (ajshoutbox.css). You can find this stylesheet in the download package. To attach this stylesheet to your blog enter the following lines with in the <head> section of your homeTemplate.blogtemplate file.

(You can keep the stylesheet file in any directory on your web server but I’d recommend the image directory of dasBlog. Attribute “href“ specified the path of CSS file.)

Ok, now this shoutBox is ready to run on your blog. If you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to post them here.

a) XML Database (All entries are stored in XML File. It can be kept under the content directory of blog)
b) Ajax Enabled – No Iframe or refreshing of whole page. Update shoutbox silently and regularly after specified interval.
c) Customizable CSS – I tried to make it very customizable. It can gel with any theme perfectly.
d) Support New dasBlog version 2.0 (with Asp.net 2.0)

I’d appreciate any feedback, comments or error from you. It will be available for download, once I make necessary changes on the basis of feedback received.

Theme: Geeks

This theme contains single style-sheet. You can download it here. Apart, I am creating some macros for dasBlog. Few of them are listed below.

LastFm Recent Tracks List – This macro will display the last n tracks played by you.

LastFm Top Artist – This macro will display a list of top artists played by you in last few days.

dasBlog Shoutbox – A AJAX enabled shout-box for dasblog. This will allow the visitors of your web-blog to directly chat with you.

In the past, dasBlog can be hosted on Asp.Net 2.0 but only with Full Trust. This limitation of dasBlog create hosting issues as most of hosting companies doesn’t allowed .Net applications to run with Full Trust for security sake. Those who have faced this trust problem know what this new version mean (figured out in my previous post.) This release completely supports Asp.Net 2.0.  Now I can integrate those application which I wanted to but couldn’t due to the version incompatibility.

Umm, I got some work this weekend.

I wanted to update the theme of this blog with a better one. I believe this contest would bring up some original creative work of participants. I hope I would be having best theme for this blog.

Setting up dasBlog is really very easy task, you will know it shortly. You can go through these generic notes provided by dasBlog (http://www.dasblog.info/SetupInstall.aspx )

Now once you have been through with the notes above, let’s go further with these steps to setup your dasBlog on Godaddy.

Upload all the files in dasblogce folder to your web server. You should keep the same structure of file and images. Any change in that may cause your web application not run properly.

[Note: Before uploading your files, make sure you have made the necessary changes the site.config file (as instructed in turorial). You need to change the <Root> value to your Blog root directory.]

You can upload the files in a new folder or in your root folder. Ex – If suppose you want to add your blog to this path (http://www.yoursite.com/blog) then you need to create a blog directory in the root and upload all contents of dasblogce in the blog directory.

After you finished uploading, open the hosting manager given by Godaddy and click on the “Directory Management”. This will brings up a new screen where you can create new directory and set the permission to the directories.

You need to set the write permission to the following directories:

To create and set permission to the directory click on the “Create Directory” Button, it will bring up the new screen given below

Your screen should look like this:

Click on the “Continue” button. Confirm your changes by clicking on “Add” button in the next screen.

Repeat the same steps SiteConfig and logs directory

[Note: You may also need to set the permission on content\binary directory. For this you can create a sub directory under content and set the permission as we have done above. Binary directory is used to store the images and files attached with your post.]

Once all above is done your application is ready to run online.