World, this is Levi Rosol.

Levi, this is the World.

Ok, now that we have that out of the way, on with the show. Over the past few months I have considered setting up a blog for various reasons. Up until tonight, none of those reasons were 'Because you have the time'.

I have read numerous blogs and seem to enjoy the layout of .Text the most, so I figured I'd track down a version of it and give it a try. After a couple google searches, then a direct link to http://www.gotdotnet.com[^] I found the download I was looking for. Unpacked it to my dev box, followed the instructions (a bit to close really) to a tee, then opened my browser hoping to see .Text was a plug and play type of application.

To my dismay, I was wrong. When I tried to hit http://blogbylevi.IvelDesigns.com[^] I got an error saying the blog could not be found, and that it was using [blogbylevi.iveldesigns.com] as the Host value, and [] as the Application.

After about an hour of searching the net (btw, why are there 3 different forums for .Text???) I literally stumbled upon a solution. I say stumbled because it was my own trial and error that found the solution. I used DotTextHerlper.exe to create my blog entry in my database. When i did that, I used the ever helpful help text provided by the tool. However, that help text is misleading at a minimum. Here is a screen shot of what I saw[^]

And based on this, I used a command similar to the following to create my blog:
dottexthelper -add username, pass, my_email, blogbylevi.iveldesigns.com, blogbylevi, true

The flaw with that is the use of commas. My db entries for those values all ended in a comma. And me being the naive .Text user assumed they were needed for some reason, and that's why DotTextHelper was needed.

So after a couple data changes and a webconfig change or two, http://blogbylevi.iveldesigns.com[^] is here for your enjoyment. I am planning to make bi-weekly posts at a minimum, and will not have personal comments here regarding my family, co-workers, friends or clients. With that said, I will be posting about my experiences with .Net and development in general, process implementations, tools on the net, and may throw in a few off topic comments about my latest GTA:San Andreas mission.

Thanks for reading my blog!