This week, I decided to upgrade to 1.4, primarily because I want to try out some new theme kung fu and I wanted to do it on the latest and greatest version of BlogEngine.  In short, the conversion was very simple.  I ran into a few hiccups, some my fault, some not, but all very minor.

Changes in CSS

There were some changes in css elements that caused me a problem or two.  The first issue was a collision with some of my own css classes being named "content", which is thrown around a lot in blogengine.  This caused some floating issues with the sidebar and the widgets.

Changes in Related Posts

The related posts section, when you view a blog post, has been enhanced.  And, I personally think it is better now.  But, there are some issues with the new technique that I know the blogengine team have seen before, and I'm sure it wont be long till they are fixed up.  The good news is that you can just replace the RelatedPosts.cs code file with the version from 1.3, and it works exactly the same way it did in 1.3.  There is more info on codeplex where I created an issue.

Changes in Blog Links

This fix is actually better for all of man kind....except for me.  Basically, I lacked the forethought of having "---" in your post slug, even though it was mentioned to me before.  Not only is it kinda ugly (some think so), but it creates invalid html, which is terrible, right.  Well, BlogEngine fixes that now, but I have lots of links to my posts with those three hyphens, and I didn't want to let that go, so I tweaked the code to continue to allow it.  That's the beauty of open source, right there.  And, just as a side note, when my posts were not being found, BlogEngine was good enough to do a quick search and provide the users with a link to the correct post anyway, so it's not like people were dead in the water, so kudos, once again.

Permission Issues

This one, I think, was caused by my host.  But, on app_statup, BlogEngine attempts to write all the xml configurations for the extensions you have installed.  The app has no issues writing to those xml files any time, other than on app_startup.  If anyone else has that problem, or has a fix, drop me a line.  For now, I just threw a try/catch around the trouble code, and everything is good to go.

Overall, the experience has been pretty painless.  The only real reason for me to upgrade was widgets and their affect on themes, but its so simple, it may be worth doing just to keep recent.  Just make sure you grab the comment security fix noted on codeplex before you do upgrade, though.

If you see anything else that is out of place because of the upgrade on this blog, please let me know.

Jesse

Yes, another BlogEngine theme.  Yes, I know more stuff than how to theme BlogEngine.  No, this has not turned into a BlogEngine only blog.  Fortunately, I am really into design mode these days, and it shows by the number of BlogEngine themes that I have put out here in the last few weeks.  The latest release is Natural Essence which was originally designed by Arcsin and can be found here.  Even though the inspiration for the theme came from Arcsin, and it looks almost identical, the underlying markup is the same as Envision, which I released last night.  So, the implementation is completely custom, and I am still going with my attempt to use the same markup on as many different designs as possible.  It may not mean much to you, if you are just looking for a quick BlogEngine theme, but it makes the design process more interesting, to me, at least, and it opens up a lot of customization opportunities down the line, but I will give you more details on that in a later post.

I think this will be the last conversion theme I do for a while.  I will probably do a few completely custom themes next, unless I find a design that's really hot that I just feel the need to work on.  And, I am curious if any of you have any suggestions on what kind of designs you might like to see here.  No promises or guarantees, but I am interested in what you may be looking for in a BlogEngine theme.  Feel free to drop me a line in this post, or on the contact page.

So, enjoy the theme, and drop me a line if you come up with any issues.

Download

Preview

Jesse Foster | jf26028

I have had enough fun for a while with my previous experiments with BlogEngine, and after watching a few of my friends jump on the theming bandwagon lately, I decided it was time to finish up some of my more functional themes that I have been wanting to release.  Envision is the first of a few themes that I plan on releasing for BlogEngine that all use the same markup for the layout, but rely on different styles for the design.  Hopefully, all the future themes that I release in the next few days will all be universally coded, and you could then enable the user to switch them out, just like you can with ThemeEngine.LayoutGala or ThemeEngine.NFL.

Envision was originally designed by styleshout, and was released under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license, which is a really permissive license.  More details are here.  And, all the BlogEngine enhancements were released BSD style, so you can do whatever you like.

And, as always, drop me a line or drop a comment if you find any issues with this theme.

Download

Preview

Jesse Foster | jf26028

BlogEngine has been increasing in popularity, and it shows by the number of quality themes that have been released lately.  Adam Zastawski released a conversion of the Marketplace design from styleshout.  It's a very crisp and clean theme, supporting 3 columns and a clean, traditional layout.  It is a great theme, and Adam has made his work available for download for free, so check it out.

Jesse Foster | jf26028

Jason Lay has adapted StarGazer from FreeCssTemplates.org, and made it freely available to download and use on your BlogEngine installation.  It's a really sharp theme, and Jason did a great job on it, so head over to his blog and download it now.

Jesse Foster | jf26028