Because .Blog is a new software package, many people will have questions about it. To help answer these questions, we've come up with a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. We hope this FAQ will help you as you consider a purchasing decision. As more questions arise, the FAQ will grow.

FAQ QUESTIONS:
What is .Blog?
What makes .Blog different from other blogging applications?
How does .Blog differ from Movable Type?
How does .Blog differ from Blogger?
Can I use my own template, instead of the standard templates that ship with .Blog?
Why does .Blog use tables instead of DIV tags for its templates?
Is it difficult to install .Blog?
I received an error message that says, "Could not access the 'CDO.Message' object." What's the problem?

1. What is .Blog?
.Blog is a web publishing application that allows the non-programmer to easily build a weblog, i.e. a regularly updated journal that appears on the web. It also allows people with little or no experience with web development to contribute content for web sites, without having to know HTML.

2. What makes .Blog different from other blogging applications?
Most weblog applications are created with scripting languages. A scripting language is a computer programming language that humans can understand easily, but, for a computer to understand it, the scripting language commands have to be translated into "machine language" that the computer understands. Translating, or compiling, the scripting language into machine language takes extra time, thus making scripting language applications run much slower. The commands that make .Blog work are already compiled into machine language, as DLLs that go into the bin folder of your web site. This greatly increases the speed of .Blog, as well as reducing server load, because translating scripting languages is not necessary.

3. How does .Blog differ from Movable Type?
While both Movable Type (MT) and .Blog run inside your web site, that's where the similarity ends. MT is an scripted application that uses a scripting language called "Perl". .Blog is a compiled ASP.NET application, which runs much faster. Every time you create a new post in MT, the application takes your post and creates a new static HTML page for your weblog's index page and detail page. This also happens any time a reader makes a comment to your blog. While this does allow pages to be served up quickly to your readers, because they are static HTML pages, the process of creating these pages puts a much heavier load on your web server. As your readership increases, and the number of comments increases, so does the load on your web server. This server load has caused some web hosts to be reluctant about hosting web sites that use MT. .Blog, on the other hand, uses dynamic pages, that is, instead of making static HTML pages, .Blog retrieves posts and comments from a database to display on your blog pages. This eliminates the server load and processing time that accompanies creating new HTML pages every time a new post or comment is made.

One big difference between MT and .Blog is the difference in price and licensing. For a fraction of the price of MT, .Blog allows you to have an unlimited number of authors on an unlimited number of blogs. MT only allows this for their highest-priced version.

4. How does .Blog differ from Blogger?
The most noticeable difference is that .Blog resides entirely on your web site. Blogger requires that you use an interface that is provided for you on the Blogger.com servers. If those servers are not operating properly, you are unable to post, edit or delete entries. .Blog eliminates reliance on a 3rd party for your weblog to work properly.

5. Can I use my own template, instead of the standard templates that ship with .Blog?
You certainly can, at least for your main weblog page. Because the actual weblog, the blogroll (the list of blogs to which you link), and the list of most recent entries are all generated by a simple HTML tag, you can easily modify a template of your own creation to display your .Blog weblog. Using your own template for other pages would be more difficult, and require some programming knowledge, but using your own template for the main page is quite easy.

6. Why does .Blog use tables instead of DIV tags for its templates?
DIV tags are very good for static HTML pages. In fact, they are the standard design element for such pages. Unfortunately, different browsers display DIV tags differently. With static pages, this is not that much of a problem, because the designer can make appropriate changes to ensure that all readers can see the page properly, because the content of the page is always known. For dynamic pages, where the content is always changing in unexpected ways, using DIV tags is more problematic. A common problem, for example, is that a long piece of text may extend beyond the designed boundaries of the DIV tag, throwing off the entire page's design. Tables are displayed in a much more uniform fashion across all browsers, and tables force text into more or less rigid boundaries. This allows you to be much more confident that your weblog will display properly, irrespective of the content. Equally importantly, since most bloggers are not professional web developers, DIV tags are far more difficult to understand. Unlike tables, the placement of DIV tags in the HTML code do not allow a novice with HTML to understand exactly how the DIV tags are supposed to be displayed. Tables are simply easier for HTML novices to understand.

7. Is it difficult to install .Blog?
Not at all. One of the key objectives for .Blog was to eliminate the difficult installation process that have upset users of other weblog software. If you aren't a programmer, installing anything on a web site can be a daunting task. To install .Blog, all you need to know how to do is to change a couple of lines in a text file, rename your desired template pages, then upload it to your web server. Our goal was to allow a non-programmer to start from scratch and be blogging in 1/2 hour, and we think we've met that goal. In fact, by the end of testing .Blog, we were able to start from scratch and install new weblogs in well under 10 minutes. Of course, we'd gotten lots of practice by then!

8. I received an error message that says, "Could not access the 'CDO.Message' object." What's the problem?
This error message us probably the most common error generated by the System.Web.Email object in .NET. It is almost always the result of a configuration problem on your mail server. Usually, this error only appears in .Blog if you are running your own server, rather than hosting your web site in a shared server environment with a hosting company.

When you set .Blog authors to receive emails containing comments, .Blog uses the commenter's email address as the "From" address. If your server is set to block emails sent from unknown addresses, a configuration error will be thrown, because the SMTP server is not set to relay such messages..

To solve the problem, perform the following steps:

1. If you are using Microsoft's SMTP Server, open the Properties window on the SMTP Server and go the the Access tab.
2. Click on the the Relay button, then change the option to All except the list below and clear any other options.
3. Click the OK command button.

If this remedies the problem, this means that your normal settings do not allow the commenter's email addres to be used as the "From" address when sending emails.

Leaving your server completely open to SMTP relays is an extraordinarily bad idea. So, go back to the SMTP servers Properties window and change the Relay option to Only the list below, then add the IP address of your web server to the list. This will configure your SMTP server to relay any email messages it receives from your web server.

If this does not fix the problem, then you will need to dig a little deeper. The FAQ that is posted at the System.Web.Mail, Oh My! website is a very valuable resource for tracking down and fixing this problem.

Click here to learn more! And to see the up to the minute information about this exciting new release, be sure to visit The .Blog Weblog!

And if you're looking for a web site, don't forget that .BLOG is a perfect fit with WebmasterDeveloper's Hosting Plans!