Be careful when hosting your web site based on DasBlog from a Windows XP machine. While IIS 6 in Windows 2003 prevents the download of files with unknown extensions by default, the IIS 5.1 in Windows XP allows downloading such files. In the case of DasBlog all *.blogtemplate files are at risk. There are a few sites out there where these files can be downloaded. Although this probably isn’t a big security risk it might be something you want to prevent. Probably the easiest way to do that is by modifying the web.config file. You should add the following line at the end of the <httpHandlers> section:

<add verb="*" path="*.snippet" type="System.Web.HttpForbiddenHandler" />

DasBlog – the weblog engine this site is running on – allows extensibility through macros. You’ll need to use them as soon as you want any additional dynamic content on your site. (The ads you can see at the bottom of the right side bar are an example of a macro which I’ve recently updated to make the ad selection a little more advanced.) The documentation doesn’t mention their development at all therefore the following post by Vasanth Dharmaraj is probably the best source of information available on it. It actually discusses everything you need to know to get going. Make sure you read it before trying to write your first macro.

It's been almost three years since I last updated my web page and it's really about time to change that. When thinking about the reasons for not updating the page in such a long period it became obvious that the old structure of the page just didn't suit the contents I'd like to publish any more.

Instead of just restructuring it and writing some code for simpler updating I decided to use an existing solution for content management. After trying out a few of free ones I chose dasBlog since this site is about to become a sort of technology oriented blog. In the last few weeks I prepared a new theme to resemble my old web page style as much as possible. I also did my best to keep relevant old content and even make it accessible through old URLs. Some of the technical details will be the subject of another posting.

But the most important thing is that I'll try to keep the updates more regular. Simpler updating and more spare time because I've just obtained my Master's degree should make this more probable. Expect mostly technical articles related to my work and spare time activities from now on.