Windows LiveWriter is an easy to use blog editor, that has a rich ecosystem of add-ins, such as the Facebook Like plugin by Guy Burstein.  In order to use the Windows based plug in with the WordPress PHP application, you’ll need to enable remote procedure calls with XML. Otherwise you will see the error “Server Error 405 Occurred. XML-RPC services are disabled on this blog.”

In order to set it up – navigate to the options-writing.php page using your browser and check the box to enable XML-RPC.

WordPress is the most popular PHP application running on Windows.  SlingAlibi currently runs on BlogEngine.NET. We decided to set up a second blog engine with WordPress, running side by side on Windows Server with BlogEngine.NET. 

The steps are super easy thanks to the Web Platform Installer, we’ll walk through them with screenshots below. In essence, it takes 5 steps to host PHP on Windows Server 2008 via WordPress (assuming your hoster supports PHP and MySql):

1. Download WebPI
2. FTP the WordPress files to your webserver
3. Create a blank MySql database
4. Configure the wp-config.php file to point to #2 and #3
5. Launch the wp-admin/install.php file in a browser and finish the setup.

Download Web Platform Installer

The easiest way to pull down WordPress for Windows is through the Web Platform Installer (WebPI).  WebPI will automatically pull down any necessary dependencies such as PHP and MySql:

In the Web Applications tab, you can choose

FTP the Files

This is simple enough to do. I use FileZilla to bring over the WP files, which I have stored in a directory called AntiqueCurator.

Create a MySQL Database

WebHost4Life uses PHPMyAdmin, a popular tool for managing my database. To access it, click on MySqlManager on your control panel. This will launch PHPMyAdmin. Type in a database name and click the Create button.

Edit the WP-Config file with your server and database information

Open up the WP-Config file in Notepad, and just update the user, password, database, and server fields with your data. Be sure to FTP the updated file over to the server.

Run the installation page in a browser

From the server, open the /wp-admin/install.php page and walk through the wizard.

It’s simple to modify the code in BlogEngine.NET to track analytics on your feeds. This is helpful if you have a variety of different topics on your site. Typically, readers will prefer to follow one particular topic – or category.  As you can see on the right hand side, SlingAlibi has a variety of different Categories – or books, as we like to think of them. 

With a little bit of customization, you can track which ones are doing well, and which ones, well, maybe it’s time to retire.

First you will have to burn a feed. By default, BlogEngine.NET will base the feed on the category name itself, such as:

http://blog.slingalibi.com/category/feed/Emirates-Hills-Chihuahua.aspx

What if we wanted to redirect that feed to an analytic engine who can examine the subscriptions and traffic to that feed?  In order to create the redirect, you’ll need to dive into the App_Code, Controls directory. There you will see a code behind file called CategoryList.cs.  Create a back up copy and then add some conditionals inside the code:

Now when your readers click on the tiny orange RSS icon next to your category, they will be redirected to the appropriate analytic engine for processing.

This week SlingAlibi has been examining ways to clean up CommentSpam.

By default, BlogEngine.NET 1.5 does not have the heavy protection from comment spam. A handy Extension like Askismet works wonders (as does the impending upgrade); however, one way to disguise your site from spammers is to see how they find your site.

A quick examination of the Analytics for this site showed how the spammer culprits determine a site is vulnerable for spam. About 4% of the traffic came from a search for “powered by blogengine.net” – in exact quotes. This is simple enough to change, while still crediting our packaged application.

Editing the Master Page

You’ll need to edit the master page for the theme you are using. For our site, we keep it simple and use the Standard theme. You’ll find this inside the Theme directory.  Open up the site.master file and change the footer text to read something else – anything else…

Ah, a perfect example of comment spam, recursive and redundant in its very own nature. How to avoid it? Slingalibi has put a policy of charging $100 per comment or advertisement not related to the post content. Thanks to comment tracking, we can see the IP address and email of the offending orginator – for SlingAlibi, it appears in many variations of the alias, Dr. Britt Borden, who owes the site over $10k already!  Since we’ve only implemented the policy, we will let you pass on the old comments and spam, but going forward, we will begin to charge you, Dr. Britt.

How to get rid of comment spam with BlogEngine.NET

The quickest way to get rid of comment spam is to initiate a fee for unrelated comments. To do so, open the comment.ascx file (located in the User Controls directory) and add the following line:

Ensure that your comments are moderated (by default they will be) so that offensive comments will not find their way into your content.  From there, use the IP address and email addresses to notify the offender of your policy and begin charging.  Depending on where you are hosted, the local authorities will assist in ensuring that your policy is indeed enforced.