John Hasson

Well, I finally got .Text to work. I had to make some changes to the code to get it to let me do a few things on the backend. I also relieve heavily on internet archive. Web Archive of Scott Water’s Dottext InstallationWalkThrough11

I’ll cache the steps here so others can figure out how to set it up: (incase it dissappears from the web)

Before you get going, you have to make one choice. Will you be hosting a single blog or multiple blogs?

OK, now that choice has been made. We will walk through the basic steps.

1. Unzip the files somewhere on your local directory
2. Create a new web application (virtual directory or site) pointing to your directory (the DottextWeb folder) *
3. Create a new SQL Server Database (you can also use an existing DB, all .Text objects start with blog_, so it should play nice)
4. Run the full database setup script (found at data\FullDBSetup.sql for binary installs and data\Dottext_095_FullDB.sql for source code installs)
5. Configure you web.config: See BasicConfiguration

To make this step a little easier, I included 4 sample web.config files in both downloads (in the config folder and otherstuff project). These are preconfigured for basic setups. Each file contains a description of what needs to be deleted at the top. Please make sure you deleted the comments once you have made your changes.

6. Add new blogs (I recommend using DottextHelper)

7. If using a multiple blog setup (community site), you need to decide if you will need to make an additional decison: How do you want to add blog directories?

• Option1 Folder/Directory setup. For each new blog you create, you will need create a folder (same directory as the code) with the same name as the blog and with an empty default.aspx file. ASP.Net will not handle non-asp.net requests by default. Since the requested blog exists in a folder does not exist, without the default file, asp.net will never know about your request.
• Option2 If you want to elminate the need to create the blog folders and default files, you can tell IIS to pass along all requests to the aspnet_isapi.dll. To accomplish this you will need IIS access. For Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 instructions see this article: [Wildcard] Mapping all requests to asp.net is a powerful feature, but it does not come without issues. See WildCardIssues for more details.

Other helpful links

.Text relies on two primary values from you database for each blog: Host and Application See HostApplication for help with this.

* If you are installing the source, the virtual directory should be called DottextWeb

Possible Issues:

Step 4 from source. FullDbErrorMessages

A few comments… you dont have to call the virtual directory DottextWeb if you are installing the source. (At least I didn’t have to)
The Dottexthelper is a command line utility in the Source Zip. I include the source Zip here incase that also goes away.

You can download DotText .95 Here (1.3M)

Original Download Source