How to develop a blog or personalized site with ASP.NET 2.0

[RedHair]

I plan to use ASP.NET to develop a blog or replicator site, I want to
use http://www.domainname.com/user1/ http://www.domainname.com/user2/
....... to represent each user's personal blog.
Here the user1, user2 .... mean (1) Virtual directory of IIS (2) Physical
folder in
file system (3) Fake url and ISAPI will parse it as a parameter?
If it's (1) or (2) then any limitation of the total folder number in the
system?
if it's (3), how to create the customized ISAPI?

The second question is how to store user-uploaded file in file system in a
web
farm environment?

Thanks.

 

[Dan]

I would approcah it like this:

1) If you want the directory style url www.blah.com/user1/ then yes isapi
filter it so in reality it runs off page user.aspx?id=9 for example
-ISAPI filtering is surprisingly easy in .net i made one to do what you
need in 10mins, including time to learn it and then code it. Search the web
there are plenty of simple tutorials on it

2) For the uploadef files i would make an interface for the user using the
html file control......you could go the ftp route as an alternative......and
then change the file names as they are uploaded. So for example user uploads
image JohnAtTheGame.jpg , and you change this to image1.jpg, then create a
directory (i find it best when based on the id number) so say create
directory called 10 (the users id), then a sub directory called images (if
it doesnt exist - just to be neat) and then save the image there.

So then to read back in your user.aspx file when it retrieves the blog for
user with id=9 you simply go to
http://www.mydomain.com/users/9/images/image1.jpg to show his image.

Also i usually store the folder location in the database, or in an xml file
if such as in this case all users will be in the same place. Then when
reading back you read from the xml file the users directory location, in
this case i called it 'users'. And your code knows to look in there for a
folder with that users id as its name. And as you kept the images named to a
convention by renaming you know the images in there will be image1.jpg,
image2.jpg etc etc so you can easily generate a page to display them at will
with code such as:

for(int i=1; i<maxNumImages; i++)
{
int imageNum = i;
string theImage = "image" + imageNum + ".jpg";
Response.Write("<img src=" + theImage + ">");

}

And the same would apply for blogs of text. This method can be epanded to do
loads of extras but the best part is you dynamically build an easy to read
directory structure, all permissions can be made using the aspx code, and
its completely scalable to as many images as you like.

Hope that helps?

 

[RedHair]

Thanks for your quick reply.
Regarding to the (2) solution, is there any total folder number limitation
in
Windows file system? beacuse program need to create physical directory.
Btw, if the www.mydomain.com is a web farm environment, then I need to
create directory in each web server.

 

[Dan]

Hi again

Not sure why you think there is a folder limitation, i dont believe there is
to my knowledge. I use this method to store products this way on an
ecommerce site. Some of the directories are packed with sub directories so
no problems thus far? Do let me know if you hear of a problem though as i
would be interested.

And yes on a web farm you will need to create the directory on each server
at upload.

 

[Sonu Kapoor]

Scott Mitchell wrote some time ago a simple blog. Check it out here: http://scottonwriting.net/sowblog/posts/5018.aspx

Sonu Kapoor [MVP]

 

[RedHair]

Thanks again.
I just want make sure there is no problem in file system, because when the
amount
of directories and files increase dramatically, the I/O of disk could be a
potential issue.
Besides,, if my web farm contains 10 web servers, when user uploaded a file
via
web1, the program is able to create directory and store file in the local
file system, but it
also needs to create directory and copy file to other remote 9 web servers.
Everytime when I add new web server into the web farm, I need to copy all
existing
directories and files to the new server and change the program. And the new
server only
shares the http requests but not the I/O of local HD, because all web server
will have same
copy of the directories and files no matter its size already grow very
large.

My preferred solution is to have a independent (to web server) ,separate and
centralized file
server or database for file storage purpose only, then if the load of http
requests increase, I
just add new web server into web farm, if the bottle neck is file I/O issue,
I just add new file or
db server, any comment on this idea?

Btw, the customized ISAPI filter has any performance issue, because I can't
find any sample
or toturials but lots of commerical product.

 

[RedHair]

Thanks, I'll try it.