I upgraded my blog to Subtext 2.1.0.5 today along with upgrading my mail server 2 days ago.  I discovered a few interesting things in my failures.

First thing is if you want to do something creative is to test before you attempt to deploy live.  I should have tested upgrading subtest to .Net 3.5 before just shoving it on my live server.

Secondly is to merge your Skins.config with the new one if you have a custom skin.  The new skins.config has a mobile phone skin that you won’t want to live without.

Next is to trim your database.  Phil Haack talks about how to shrink your SubText database size on his blog.  I had to tweak my database name as it isn’t Subtextdata.  I also emptied my error logs.  Doing all these brought my database from 120mb down to 20mb!

Since Subtext included new features for Live Writer support, you’ll have to refresh your settings in Live Writer.  This is super simple.  All you need to do is go to Weblog->Edit Weblog Settings then click “update account configuration”.  Then you just click “next” the 5 or so times and bam, you’re all good.  If you’re like me, you’ll want to turn back off the Using theme view by going to View->Edit using Theme

Thanks Phil for the awesome update.  Now I do believe I’ll be adding in home page paging.

Better Than Everyone now works on mobile devices too!

My attempt to upgrade my blog engine from Subtext 1.9.5 to Subtext 2.0.1 failed tonight so there may have been a bit of triage as I attempted to roll back.

Things I learned but forgot about doing deployments.

1. copy all files to server in a different directory first
2. copy current app directory on SERVER
   1. doesn’t hurt to have a local copy too
3. verify you have done those two steps in case of failure

I FTP’ed up my files to the running app directory like a stupid, stupid person and didn’t have a local server back up.  So it took me better part of a few hours to get everything corrected again.  It was one of those crashes you just can’t look away from.

Subtext 2.0.1, I’m gunning for you tomorrow night.

Just did an article on how to create a full blown cowbell windows mobile professional application over at Coding4Fun.  Shows how to do pInvoke calls, touch screen, image resizing (in source, not in article), resource embedding, creation and deployment.

Read the article out and play with the source code.  Also if you want some other windows mobile intro level topics, I have a tag called “Getting Started with Windows Mobile” that has everything I’ve learned step by step.