I got my site up and running at http://www.edream.org. Yeah I have  lots of fun. the back end is Access, not SQL server. I did found several pitfalls about this starter kit and they are on my working list.

1) Store the album photo in 4 different size in database doesn't seen a good idea. The access database grow big quickly unless database size is not an issue. I am planning to store in the disk and save the path in the database instead.

2) I just added a blog into the site, still working on finish it. My idea of sorting by month and year is click to the month of the calendar month, a 12 months drop down list will show up, same as year. if anyone knows how to do this please drop me a note. I certainly appreciate it!

3) The link page is hard code, I would like to make it read from the database so that add a link is not too much a pain.

4) I added a "back to this album" button on the detail page, so you don't have to back to the main menu to go to the album list. also I would like to add album caption and description on album thumnail list page.

the list can go on and on...If you got any good idea let's share.

Hi,

there's an article about extending the personal starter kit.

I'm interested which blog engine you added or did you create one yourself?

Grz, Kris.

Thanks so much for the article. It's an informative one.

I used to have an ASP version blog, I am rewriting it using ASP.NET 2.0, all the old code are pretty much useless.

I've got my own code going for a blog on my PWS install as well (http://www.morningz.com)

which is just a user control and using FreeTextBox to manage the blog posts

also spent a lot of time making the calendar on the left side of the page totally Javascript based and keep track of blog posts....

you idea of #1 is talked about in depth a lot inside this forum already, havent seen anyone really post some code for it yet though.....

#3 would be a super simple task

I like your calendar and the way you present the blog. Very nice job! My next task is link the calendar day to the blog post date like yours. It shouldn't be hard but this is my first time use c# create a web site, I don't expect myself as speedy I as with VB.NET.

I saw you mentioned something in DevConnect, I was there in Las Vegas too! Too bad I didn't go to any of the Master page related section. I thought I already "master" it at that point but appearently they got some good stuff.

I like your site also, I like how you came up with a differnt theme ;)

I am not sure about the photo store in different sizes, I am actually thinking of converting my photos DB to use actual images. But I have no information on that.

The blog part of mine I came up with 5 simple fields in a table on the database.
Date - Smalldatetime

Title nvarchar(50) so i dont get long winded there.

Body - ntext shouldnt have a limit and doesnt look like it so far

ID - int for the key and when i get unbusy at work make it use the ID number in the blog field in the address bar

Month - int for the month that the post was made sort of like a LJ type thing for searching by month later

With the links at number 3 I made a table in the database or them as well.

ID - int  so i know how many links i have and can view them by ID if i ever choose

SiteName - ntext What is the name of the site/link

SiteAddress - ntext the full http:// address of the site (http:// is included cause i don't know how to make it automaticly add fields)

Class - int i like to try to keep things orginized and i have the links in differnt classes

Desc - ntext a description of what the link is

then on where the links are was some code including them in the href and when you view the link in raw code you only see the basics, i can post the code for that if you would like.

I wish i would have read things here before i got a wild hair and went out and programmed this stuff on my own

Sue, I love the theme you did on your site.
MorningZ, I really like your blog calendar and setup.
If you guys ever want to post your code let me know. I'm very green and would appreciate all the examples I can get.

Oh and smcgroarty, I like the red theme you've done.

There should be a listing of Personal Web Site Starter Kit sites that everyone has running so we can go back and check on other's progress. I've gotten a lot of ideas from this forum and a lot of help as well.

Rob
www.robgibson.ca
[email protected]

When I got sometime on hand I will.

I haven't yet completed the conversion from classic asp to asp.net 2.0 for the blog. Now it is running asp.net 2.0 classic asp side by side.

the Album page is customized with many new features. Haven't have time to change the BLOB byte database-based image system into file system. but I did some enhancement that will reduce the database more than 50%. here are what I have done:

1) delete image poster and original size from the database. keep full and thumb size only. I thought about generate thumb image on the fly, but thumb image don't take up much space and is faster load so not I didn't take this step.

2) increase the Fullbytes size from 600 to 650.

3) Fix the bug will stractch the smaller image to fit bytesFull size. in another words, if an image's both width and height are smaller than 650, it will display in it's original size.

4) add one "export" button next to "import". it export the all images from the database to a desinated folder. the export function can be customized to export a spedific image size such as thumb or Full, as well as export specific album. by default, export all Full size images from the database.

5) Add description, last update field to each album and photo. albums order by last update time.

still some more works done I may forgot to mention. It's done in C#, again this is my first C# project I am quite proud of myself  by the progress :-)

Once I got some free time on hand I will post the code on my site.

Sue

sorry  above message is addressed to coolpran.

coolpran, what language are you useing?

suegooge, i am using c#. will you be able to post the code? thanks

Coolpran: I got my C# version starter kit from http://forums.asp.net/1128547/ShowPost.aspx. It's a good place to start if you use Access(I don't want to pay premium price for SQL server hosting). If you prefer sql server (2000 or 2005) just stick with the original starter kit. I am a VB person, but too lazy to write my own AccessHelper, so endup learning C# to create my site because someone else have AccessHelper written in C#. Sicne you only interest in the BLOG code, unfortuantely it not on my priority list to finish the convertion. But you can definitely get yourself an asp or asp.net 2.0 version blog plug into your starter kit http://www.codeproject.com  and http://www.planetsourcecode.com are good place to look at. If you do found an asp.net 2.0 versino blog, please do share with us.

Good news for Jskarp5953, someone just post their vb version Blog included starter kit on their site. http://www.willyd.ca. I haven't yet read the code, have no knowledge regarding it's performance. suppose is a good one, at least I thankful someone genorous enough to share their code.

Hope this will help