.wilk

A few weeks ago I published a post regarding upgrading my blog to BlogEngine 1.6 and implementing it on .Net 4.0.  The main reason was to get control over comment spam, and BE 1.6 has some improved comment spam controls.  Let’s be honest, if it weren’t for comment spam, I may not have any comments.  But I would at least like to stop blatant spam.  Spam that says what a great writer I am, the ones that say I am intelligent and handsome, well those are probably legitimate comments. My intent on this posting was to simply compare the Askimet spam report to what I see on the site.  Did Askimet stop most of the spam?  Did it flag legitimate comments as spam?  However, this trial turned out to be a little more interesting than I expected.  I was forced to consider what defines spam.  With exceptions, spam tends to ramp up from 1-3 after posting.  If your are Gutherie, Hanselman or many of the other intellectual celebrities, you probably don’... [More]

In our last few posts, we have been looking a various technologies applied against the [Nerd Dinner] application.  We chose Nerd Dinner as our reference application, because it is well known, it is simple, and there is a real-world [functioning application] for comparison. In our earlier posts, we applied StructureMap and Moq. In my last post I discussed the use of a centralized method in the test class used to instantiate the controller and set-up the mocks.  My concern is that this method can get overly complicated in a larger application when all the set-ups for all the tests are plugged in.  Another concern was creating test data for every test when that test data may only be used in some tests.  The alternative was to instantiate the controller and mocks in each test.  That way only set-ups and test data need for the specific-test are created.  However, this strategy can be even worse on a large project.  If a new dependency is added to a contr... [More]

We continue our series of experiments using the infamous Nerd Dinner application as our reference implementation.  Last time we added Dependency Injection using StructureMap.  This time we will look at unit testing with Moq.  Like the dependency injection last week, the unit testing strategies used on Nerd Dinner work fine for an application the size of Nerd Dinner.  However, my goal in this series of experiments is to try to understand how to apply various alternative technologies and how these technologies impact larger real-world applications. The Nerd Dinner application is relatively small and it already has about 100 unit tests.  What happens when there are 500 or a 1000 units tests?  I realize that like lines of code, the number of units tests by itself is meaningless.  However, assuming you continue to follow your methodology, as an application gets larger and more complicated, both the number of lines of code and the number of unit tests go up... [More]

BlogEngine.Net has been a great blogging solution for years.  It is easy to install and upgrade, it is easy to configure, and you can be up and running with your own blog quickly.  However, my frustration is comment spam.  I have struggled with spam since my very first post.   I look at professional bloggers, they have active comments, no catpcha, and no spam – I hate them.  I have used the Commentor extension, and I have an Akismet account.  I have talked to other users of BlogEngine.Net, and they have all turned off comments because spam is just an unacceptable problem with BlogEngine.  I feel my blog needs comments.  Otherwise, I can just post white papers on my web site.  It’s decision time, get comment spam fixed, or get a new blog engine. Earlier this year, the good folks at BlogEngine.Net released version 1.6.  In this release, the BlogEngine.Net team has worked hard to address comment spam.  Akismet and other spam con... [More]

Technorati Tags: .Net,MVC2,StructureMap,Dependency Injection,Nerd Dinner During the keynote of the #mvcconf virtual conference, Scott Hanselman said that only 3 contributions have been made to the open source Nerd Dinner project.  3?!  No wonder my Java friends scoff when I say there is open source in the .Net world.  We (.Netters) should be ashamed.  Most of us either cut our MVC teeth on Nerd Dinner, or we at least refined our skills by reviewing its implementation. I will be conducting a series of experiments in dependency injection for perso del.icio.us Tags: .Net,MVC2 nal reasons, and I will be using Nerd Dinner as my reference MVC application.  It’s simple, it’s a known quantity, and perhaps something over the coming weeks will be worthy of contribution to the project.  This post will not likely be worthy of contribution; I am offering nothing new.  I am adding dependency injection using StructureMap to an MVC project.  This has been ... [More]

I have talked to more than one Microsoft Partner who is ready to declare Microsoft Commerce Server dead, but they can't find the body or next of kin to confirm its departure.  Let me put this into perspective; I want Commerce Server to survive.  I have been using Microsoft Commerce Server since before it was Merchant Server.  I was one of a handful of people invited to Redmond to preview Merchant Server before it was released to provide feedback and suggestions.  Merchant Server evolved to Site Server then Commerce Server and then a Commerce Server / Sharepoint Hybrid.  I have much invested in Microsoft technology, but like many of you, I need to decide where to invest my future.  So let's conduct our own CSI (Commerce Server investigation): 1) Commerce Server 2009 finally made it to a CTP release in January 2010 with little documentation and even less product marketing. 2) Commerce Server, of any version, cannot be found in the Product listings of msdn.... [More]

Day 2 did not seem as busy as day 1, but I would still grade attendance as healthy. Some vendors said they had hoped for more attendance, but there seemed to be a correlation between an exhibitor's happiness with the conference attendance and the quality of their product - go figure. In an age of application architectures dominated by loosely-coupled services, I was surprised by how tightly coupled commerce is to content management. Some vendors' products are closely bound to ERP solutions as well, but that's a business decision. There are enough API's and middleware available that there should not be a technical reason to be tightly bound to a single ERP solution. However, the bond between CMS and commerce is more fundamental. At first I attributed this fact to a business decision; I would want to sell the complete solution as well. But some vendors were willing to give up a sale instead of giving up their CMS defense. I then decided it was maturity - or lack of it. Like a 16 year ol... [More]

Getting ready to start IRCE day 2, and my feet still hurt from yesterday. The conference was really crowded yesterday. If you have been to any conferences over the last 2 years you may recognize this as a really good sign. I spent some time with a couple of vendors who had not been on my radar for various reasons. But first some eCommerce economy news. marketlive, an eCommerce SaaS provider from Petaluma, Ca., published their year-over-year performance numbers for the quarter ending March 2010, and the results were good. Visits were up 22%, and revenue was up 14%. More importantly, the conversion rate was up 20%. Numbers from a single provider can be skewed by unusual results from 1 or 2 merchants, but these numbers are encouraging. In their U.S. Online Retail Forecast (March 2010), Forested Research projected on-line retail sales will continue to grow at close to 10% for each of the next three years. Sales are projected to reach almost 250 billion by 2014 but remain about 7-8%... [More]

I'm here at IRCE 2010 in Chicago. This show offers some promising signs for the economy. The conference is projecting a record crowd of over 6,000 attendees. That represents an increase of about 25% over last year. Granted last year was slower than normal, but ECommerce is not exactly the razor's edge for technology. 25% is a sizeable increase, and it shows retailers are at least planning to spend on technology. Stay tuned for more from McCormmick West as I bring updates from the expo. As an interesting side note, I abandoned my laptop for this trip. I am doing this whole trip and these blog entries carrying only my trusted paper journal and my new HTC EVO 4G phone. We'll see how the EVO holds up.

The description is used as the meta description as well as shown in the related posts. It is recommended that you write a description, but not mandatory [More]