A blog about .NET, Graffiti, Community Server, and Kevin's life

Working on version 2.1 of DotText-CS-Converter

A few people have sent me some suggestions for improvements to the DotText-CS-Converter, so I will be making a version 2.1 to be released in the next day or two. Here are the things I'm planning on adding so far:

  1. Improved referrer performance. I use the regular Community Server Data Provider (DP) to save the referrals. The way it works is that I add all of the referral objects to an ArrayList and then pass that to the DP to save. The CS DP opens a database connection, loops through each referral, and calls a stored proc to add it to the database. So there's a possibility that for a lot of items in the list the connection may timeout. Rather than pass all of the referrals in one massive list, I changed it to pass referrals to the DP in smaller chunks. This change will also make the referral progress bar display more accurate.
  2. Make converting blog content optional. A couple people have asked for the option to make the converting of all the weblog-specific content optional. That way someone could just import users and/or .Text galleries if desired. This was a simple change so I added it as an option.
  3. Better Options UI. With the addition of yet another option (see #2), the conversion options screen was getting too crowded. So I split it out into 2 screens (general conversion options and weblog conversion options) to improve the readability of the converter utility.
  4. Keep Category ID's the same. This is the one I'm still working on, as it's a little more work than the small tweaks above. While version 2.0 will keep post, article, comment, and trackback ID's the same between .Text and CS (if you enable that option), category ID's may be different. This could be an issue for URL's that reference a specific category instead of a specific post/article. So I'm going to override the CS CommonDataProvider method that is used to save categories and specify the category ID the same way I did for PostID's.

I'll create a new post when version 2.1 is ready to be downloaded. Thank you to everyone who has given feedback on my blog, the CS Forums, and email.

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» Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. Dave Burke's Blog — March 20, 2005 4:02 PM

» Comments

  1. Dave Burke avatar

    Kevin, I did notice that my Categories RSS links are bad, with URLs like rss.aspx?CategoryID=100. I was going to explore (and fix) this as part of my pre-release work. I didn't know the Category IDs changed. This may be the origin of my error, then?



    Will definitely be looking forward to running 2.1 when its ready. 2.0 rocked! Thanks!

    Dave Burke — March 20, 2005 12:42 AM
  2. kevin avatar

    Dave,


    Yep, keeping the Category ID's the same between .Text and CS wasn't something I even thought of for some reason until Tim Marman suggested it. So now, with v2.1, I'll be keeping post, article, comment, trackback, and category ID's the same. If there's any other kind of ID that is used in URL's and needs to be kept the same that I'm missing please let me know! You know .Text alot better than I do.

    kevin — March 22, 2005 12:02 AM
  3. Dave Burke avatar

    Kevin, Is retaining the same CategoryIDs a problem? I can understand retaining permalinks for /archives/03/2/24.aspx, etc., but categories? You did a fantastic job with 2.0. Does everything that _I_ need it to do. btw, I solved my category RSS link error by applying the ?App=$1 fix. So I'm good with DotText-CS-Converter 2.0!

    Dave Burke — March 22, 2005 7:12 PM
  4. kevin avatar

    Dave,


    The category ID is used in some URL's, so matters to some folks who have links out on the web that point to their category listings. Like I linked to your Community Server posts using the URL http://dbvt.com/blog/category/23.aspx



    When I converted my site over to CS all of my category ID's now differernt than my .Text ones were, so I suspect yours would be too. So that URL wouldn't necessarily work after you upgrade to CS unless you kept the ID's the same. Of course thats a minor thing for most poeple =)

    kevin — March 24, 2005 9:47 AM
  5. kevin avatar

    Version 2.1 is now available! More info is in the new post:



    http://www.kevinharder.com/blogs/kevin/archive/2005/03/24/333.aspx

    kevin — March 24, 2005 11:10 AM
  6. Dave Burke avatar

    Ah, yes. Thanks for explaining about the categoryIDs. You're absolutely right.

    Dave Burke — March 25, 2005 12:02 AM

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