The beginning if a new year is a common time to look back over the past 12 months to evaluate what you did, where you went, and where you are going.  Without boring you to death, I thought I'd share a few things I learned and a few things I hope to do better in the coming year.

Learned

1. If you aren't growing, move

I had become stagnant in my previous job and had known for a while it was holding me back professionally, but it is hard to leave a secure job.  However, last spring it become very clear to me, I was going to continue to get frustrated in my position and this summer found a new opportunity closer to home that I'm happy with.  My new job keeps me working full time in the technology that I enjoy and has cut down on my frustration 10 fold.  I feel less stressed and I'm becoming a better developer every day.

2. Don't be afraid to share

For years, I kept thinking that I should get involved helping with an open source project.  I thought about many projects at many times, but was always a bit timid to dig in and submit patches and new features.  It was easiest to keep on the fringe and do nothing.  Early this year however, I decided to stop procrastinating and do something.  I ran across the BlogEngine.NET project very early in its life cycle and offer to do whatever was needed to help.  It has been a wild ride that has been a great.  I've met a ton of nice people, learned quite a bit, and have a something I'm excited to be a part of.  I only wish I had done something like this sooner.

3. I can't learn everything about everything

I spend a lot of time every week reading, studying, and trying new technologies.  It seems the more time I put in the less I know.  In years past, I tried unsuccessfully to read and learn a little about anything and everything.  In the past I've kept a huge reading list I would never get through a feel a bit lame about not having learned some of this stuff.  This year, I just learned to let go of some things.  I still like to get a general idea of most of the major topics in my development world, but I've focused my studying on smaller areas and going deeper.  No guilt, no stress, and better learning.

For 2008:

1. Get more active in the developer community

I see this as an extension of my open source lesson from 2007.  I can only see advantages of getting more active, learning to know new people, sharing ideas, and working together.  I guess we'll see how I do this, but I think it will be a combination of live events, participation on community sites, and blogging.  I'm already registered for the January Philly Code Camp and Mix 08.  If you're going to either of these, introduce yourself.

2. Prioritize my time better

This will be a daily challenge for me.  I think I made some good strides in this area in the past year, but I want more.  I know my priorities in life.  However, it is easy to get off track and waste time on something that I really don't need, care about, or even enjoy.  I've already started to plan better over the past few weeks and hope to continue to do so.  I need to come up with better ways to take advantage of small pockets of time that I come across as well.

3. Reach outside

Sometimes you just need to add something different in the mix to see how it works.  I've started to read a few blogs that our outside of the development areas I work in.  I hope to find a few more gems over the coming year.  I don't want to study these things in depth, but just get a little insight into what others are learning, enjoying, and interested in.

As we all know, installing BlogEngine.NET from scratch is a piece of cake.  Upgrading, however, can cause people a bit of concern and it is easy to overlook something.  Here is a guide for your journey to BlogEngine.NET 1.3 from 1.2.

1. Back it up

This is the standard first step to doing most anything.  While I don't always do this step myself, I should and you'd be wise to as well.

At a minimum, backup your App_Data folder and any custom themes or extensions you might have done.  SQL users should add the sql.config file as well as the database to that.

2. Download BlogEngine.NET 1.3 (website)

This is an easy and painless step.  If you are reading this, you likely already have done this step.  If not, get it here.  Unzip this file to a place you can work with it.  Go into properties and remove the Read Only check.  (This step has helped some and has never hurt anyone.)

3. Update the Database

If you are an XML user, please take a moment of silence for your SQL lovin' brethren, as they actually have something to do in this step.  Then move on to step #4.

Ok, SQL provider people, there are two things you need to take care of to get ready for 1.3.

First, you need to download the upgrade script and run it.  This does a bunch of magic including adding a field to a table, adds some entries to your settings table, and some other stuff like indexes, relations, etc.

Second, you are going to need to update your web.config file.  Release 1.3 has moved away from using the sql.config as it was not supported in mono.  So you are going to need to move your connection string to the new web.config file.  (Yes, I'm really sorry about that.) Also, don't forget to make the MSSQLProvider the default provider (as XML is the default setting in the new web.config.)

4. Update your web site

Now, we are copy the new stuff to your website.  You'll want to copy everything up except the App_Data folder.

Once it is copied, you should be able to browse to your blog and see the 1.3 version number at the bottom of the page.

5. Update your Settings

Login and go to your settings page.  There are a few new things to look at.

Under the Basic Settings area, you'll see a Mobile Theme and Show post navigation links options.  Be sure to select Mobile for your Mobile theme (unless you've already made a new one.)

Under the Advanced Settings, Enable Trackbacks and Enable Pingbacks now appear with Send and Receive options.  Turn them on or off as you'd like.

Be sure to click Save Settings when you are done.

Troubleshooting

If you are having trouble getting your web site up after copying the files up, please remove any custom themes and extensions and try again.  (You may need to manually change the selected theme to Standard in your settings.xml file or be_settings table if you remove a theme that you were using.

If you still have trouble after that, please have a look on the BlogEngine.NET forums and wiki.  Someone else likely had a similar problem so searching is the best option.  If not however, ask a question.

Good luck and enjoy the latest version.

It doesn't seem it was that long ago the BlogEngine.NET team was wrapping up release 1.2, but that was back on the last day of September and here we are near the end of December and we're talking about 1.3 already.

As usual, the team has put in a great effort on this release.  While the feature list seems a little shorter than it has been, there has been a ton of work under the hood to make BlogEngine.NET even better.  Mads has written up a great post detailing the "What's new" in release 1.3.  I recommend reading if you are looking for the full run down.

Here is the quick run down as I see it:

• Extension Manager - A nice, clean interface to control all these very cool extensions people have been making.  I love this!
• Extension Expansion - This release gives more events to hook into and more features through existing ones.  It has been really cool to see what people have been coming up with and this should help people do even more.
• Expanded API - We now enable even more options through our API for programs like Windows Live Writer.  Pages can now be created and edited through WLW.  Categories can be added on the fly along with a few other things I wrote about a few weeks back.
• Mono Support - BlogEngine.NET now supports Mono right from the download.  I have not tried out this installation personally yet, but I'm hoping to do so before the new year.
• Improved Importer - Importing blogs is messy work.  We've put together some tools to help make it better.  We support BlogML, RSS, and Atom imports now.  We've done a lot of work cleaning this up and making it better for people looking to switch.
• Improved User Roles - Editor role is better defined.  If you have multiple users running BlogEngine.NET, this will interest you.

There has never been a better time to check out BlogEngine.NET.  You can download the new version here.

It's been a while since I've posted any theme updates so today is the day.  In looking through the blog stats, it was surprising to find how popular this simple theme has been.  It might just be because it is the source code for my lengthy theme creation webcast, but it also might be because people like it.

Anyway, I've made a few changes to the theme this time around.  First, Jack wrote and share a bug fix to make the header work properly in IE.  I appreciate the correction and added it in.

Second, I changed the theme from fixed width to full width.  While I prefer the fixed width myself, I believe more people prefer the full width style (and have been asked about more full width themes).  I left a version of the css file with the fixed width (default_fixed.css) in the folder.  You can move this to default.css to restore the fixed width if you prefer it as well.

You can download it here or from the BlogEngine.NET Themes page.

Over the past week, I've spent some time on the BlogEngine.NET APIs.  Specifically, the Metaweblog API and some similar API calls.  What this means to the average person is simply that the next version of BlogEngine.NET will have some new features to take advantage of in Windows Live Writer (WLW) and possibly other software.  (BlogEngine.NET 1.3 is due out later this month.)

The thing I've been asked the most about is the ability to add new categories from inside of WLW.  With BlogEngine.NET 1.3 (and the current build on CodePlex), you can begin to do that.  Now when you click on the categories dropdown, the top option is a text box allowing you to add a new category.  The category will be added when you publish your post.  I've also added in the ability to control comments (on or off), set the slug of a post and enter an excerpt.  These items can be access by pressing F2 or displaying the properties, under the View menu.

The other big change was support for pages.  Pages have been getting more and more attention in BlogEngine.NET and now you can add/edit/delete them from inside WLW.  To work with Pages in WLW, you can click File, then select New Page.  The window changes a bit as pages have different features in WLW, but from here you can create a new page.  We also support the ability to select a page parent from inside WLW.  The File, Open can now be used to not only pull back recent post from your blog, but also all your pages from your blog.  This should make editing and managing your pages inside of WLW a breeze.

I'll likely post more information on using these new features sometime down the road, but I wanted to write and share a bit of what I've been working on.