The first BlogEngine.NET site I customized and put online was version 1.3.1 in May for my sister. BlogEngine-driven DBVT.COM went online in June with 1.3.1, which I upgraded to 1.4 in July. Mads and crew have been feverishly adding improvements to 1.4 and earlier this week released 1.4.5. My sister's site is going to hang with 1.3.1 for a while I think (sorry, Sis!), but I have to jump on 1.4.5 for DBVT.COM.
Since my site is rather customized I like to look around a bit before I start dragging and dropping. Here are some notes for my upcoming upgrade that I thought were worth passing along (or at least recording for my own reference!)
SQL UPGRADE SCRIPT. Yes, there's a 1.4.0-to-1.4.5 SQL Upgrade script. Several upgrade scripts are provided and are located in the BE.NET/Web/Setup folder.
A very cool feature of BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5 is out-of-the-box support for various databases (with continued support for XML.) Included are SQL Server, MySQL, SQLite and VistaDB Express. The install scripts are located in the same /Web/Setup folder.
A LOT is different in the BlogEngine.Core library files, but hopefully we smart developers didn't touch the Core library when customizing BlogEngine.NET 1.4. I said "smart" developers, which means I wasn't referring to myself and that I'll need to rewrite some classes. Not a big deal. To use multiple master pages I added custom page classes that derive from BlogBasePage.cs which in BE.NET is where the blog master page is specified. Since BlogBasePage.cs has been modified in 1.4.5 a bit (thank you, WinMerge!) I'll need to modify those derived page classes.
Web.config changes from 1.4 in 1.4.5 are almost nil. I customized the web.config a bit in 1.4 to use ASPNET Membership, so I wanted to see what changes were in store there. Using my trusty WinMerge to compare a virginal 1.4 web.config with its 1.4.5 counterpart I located a single change in 1.4.5, the addition of a "BlogEngine.HardMinify" appSettings key and the removal of the <profile /> section. So we're good there.
Other than that I'll want to rewrite much of my DBVT custom theme to take advantage of the 1.4.5 updates, but I'm used to that. It also gives me the opportunity to get to know Mads and the other contributors to BlogEngine.NET better by spending more quality time with their quality code.
One cursory 1.4.5 observation I'm happy to see is a cleaner CommentView.ascx in 1.4.5. Here's the WinMerge screenshot. 1.4.5 is on the left, absent the profusive client-side javascript of its 1.4 predecessor.
More BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5 observations coming. Hopefully I'll have a happy upgrade story to share with you soon.