POP Blog

This is a lightweight blog app that uses ASP.NET v6, SQL Server and Azure storage for podcast files.

About this project

This is based roughly on my personal blog, which was first posted in the late aughts as an ASP.NET Webforms app, eventually converted to MVC and then ASP.NET Core after that. It's a little crusty in places, but it's super simple. It's not a SPA because the public side is all text, and the admin side is too simple to bother. I open sourced it because I needed a basic aggregator for a few projects, and wanted to use a Razor class library and just override the layout with the appropriate header and CSS to skin it as necessary.

New in v3

• Updated all of the bits to .NET 6, Bootstrap 5 and removed jQuery.
• New feature: Simplified photo post form for quick (mobile) posts with a photo, automatically resized for blog use.
• Cleaned up UI in a bunch of places, including cleaner comment display.

Getting started

Run the database project by passing your database connection string as the only parameter, and dbup will magically make the schema current. You can specify the connection string in /Properties/launchSettings.json.

The MVC project can be used as a class library to feed your web app by referencing the project. Even better, reference the packages (see below). Override views with your own markup in the web project if you need to (particularly the /Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml file, for custom header and footer, for example), along with your assets and such. Mimic the stuff in Program.cs for the back end and the gulpfile.js for the front end, as seen in the PopBlog.Web project.

Go the package route

The latest release packages are here:
https://www.nuget.org/packages/PopBlog.Mvc/
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@popworldmedia/popblog

The latest CI build NuGet package feed for the MVC project is here:
https://www.myget.org/F/popblog/api/v3/index.json

The latest CI Build npm package feed for the meager script needs is here:
https://www.myget.org/F/popblog/npm/
You'll need to do copying of the various files, which the project views expect to be in /lib/{packagename}.

Upload size limits

If you plan to use the podcast serving mechanism and run the app on an IIS-based service (including Windows-based Azure App Services), you'll need to figure out how to raise the request size limit in old-fashioned web.config. This answer on StackOverflow should help. This is necessary to upload large files via the admin.

What's in appsettings.json?

• PopBlogConnectionString: The connection string to your database. For local dev, use something like server=localhost;Database=popblog;Trusted_Connection=True;TrustServerCertificate=True;.
• ReCaptchaSiteKey and ReCaptchaSecretKey: You'll need these from Google reCAPTCHA to help reduce comment spam.
• BlogTitle: This appears after a hyphen on all of the page <title> tags.
• BlogDescription: This appears in the <h1> of the blog home page, and in front of the hyphen on the home page <title>.
• TimeZone: And integer represnting the time zone you want all of the times to be set for. For example, -5 is US Eastern Time. It will adjust during Daylight Saving.

If you're using this to serve a podcast, you're going to need this stuff, too. Don't yell at me, Apple wants this stuff:

• StorageConnectionString: The connection string to your Azure Storage Account where the blobs go. Use UseDevelopmentStorage=true for the local storage emulator. Remember that you need to set your storage container to have anonymous read access.
• StorageContainerName: The container in your blob storage where you're gonna drop your podcast masterpieces. Make sure the container is publicly accessible, or your users will be 403'd.
• StorageAccountBaseUrl: The base URL for where your blob container is. For local, it's probably http://127.0.0.1:10000/devstoreaccount1, for a production location, it's something like https://[storageaccountname].blob.core.windows.net. Do not include the trailing slash.
• Language: The two-letter ISO 639 code for the language of your podcast. Defaults to en.
• FeedImageUrl: Location of your feed image.
• ItunesCategory: From Apple's list of categories.
• ItunesExplicit: Boolean to let Apple know if you use naughty words.
• Author: Appears in the channel definition for Apple. Put your company name or other entity here.
• OwnerName and OwnerEmail: More things to let Apple know who you are. They're kind of high maintenance.
• IsUsingDirectDownload: Skip the counter and redirect and link directly to the file in storage. This is for services like Apple that demand random access to the file itself.