This site (tim-stanley.com) was first started in February 2006. It first went publicly live October 8, 2007. The engine used to power this site was used from 2006 to 2022. The main technology really hadn't been modified since 2010. Not bad for a sixteen year run.
In 2022, this site was updated, but this is a summary of the underlying technology that powered this site for sixteen years.
Original Site Platform
- ASP.NET 2.0
- .Net 3.5 SP 1
- Visual Studio 2008
- C#
- Windows Live Writer Build 12.0.1366.1026
- Windows Live Writer Code Snippet Plugin Code Snippet download Polaroid Picture Plugin
- XML based content
- SQLite based DB (for content and relationship data)
Original Blog Platform
The site utilized BlogEngine.Net with several Extensions. Some custom controls are used on a lot of the pages.
- Content Management System - BlogEngine.Net
- Table Of Content Generator [ tocautogen ] extension by Klaus Graefensteiner
- Most Popular Posts extension and TopPosts control by Al Nyveldt
- Copy Code To Clipboard Extension by Troy Goode
- Social Bookmarking extension by Danny Douglass
- Icons from IconGalore, FastIcon, IconDrawer, WebDesignerDepot and Artura
- Background image from AbsoluteCross.com
- Custom Control for ArchiveList - sortable grid layout of contents
- Custom Control for Contacts - allows positioning the contact information in a page instead of a specific link.
- Custom Control for Flickr Slide Show - via Paul Stamatiou
- Custom Control for Simple Viewer Photo Gallery via Airtight Interactive.com
- Custom Control for Page Includes
- Custom Control for Page Layouts
- JQuery Snapfish menus
As I developed one site, I had another, then another, then another. Before long I was spending more time applying patches / changes to the main code base and distributing it to all the sites than I was on content. That lead me to try to focus on one code base for multiple websites and that eventually led to a multi-tenant solution.
The main portions of BlogEngine.Net provided a solid basis, but it was heavily modified to support a multi-tenant blog platform. That meant some pretty significant changes to the model and code base. What was left had it's origins in BlogEngine.Net but it was pretty significantly different than BlogEngine.Net.