Searching for my lost shaker of salt

I was wondering why there wasn’t the steady stream of spam or occasional inquiries coming from my new blog… it wasn’t set up right!  So I apologize to anyone who has tried to contact me and thought I was blowing you off.

The issue is an odd setting.  When I filled out the E-Mail section of the settings screen, I filled in what I expected:

The error message is wonderfully cryptic:

Could not connect - Mailbox name not allowed. The server response was: sorry, your mail was administratively denied. (#5.7.1)

Inquiries from GoDaddy support was less than inspiring, basically saying there was a problem in my code.  Great.

So I tried every single e-mail account and password I have with GoDaddy and continued to receive the same error message.

On a whim, I changed the first e-mail address, where the messages should be going.  I changed it to one of my GoDaddy accounts.  Bazinga!

The issue is GoDaddy doesn’t allow relays to “free” e-mail providers like GMail, Live, AOL, etc.  So by keeping that e-mail address, using SMTP server relay-hosting.secureserver.net on port 25 with no other settings, it works fine.

Windows Live Writer is a great free tool for authoring blogs.  Aside from a nice WYSIWUG editor, it also handles the uploading and resizing of images, making this a painless process.

Setting it up this time was a little more challenging before and I didn't see any good guides out there, so I felt it needed capturing for others who may be having problems.  This wasn’t an issue for me with earlier version of WLW (circa 2008) but is with the one I just downloaded via Windows Update.

When configuring your blog account, select “Other blog service”

Now add the URL of your blog, including “metaweblog.axd” along with your BE.NET admin account.

WLW doesn’t detect the blog type, so tell it to use the MetaweblogAPI.  You again type in your URL with “metaweblog.axd” appended to it for the Remote Posting URL:

Give your blog a nickname and you are all set. 

Yes, this works as I am typing this post with WLW!!

Welcome to the new blog.  Or really the old blog with a new blog engine and a new host.

I've been wanting to get back into blogging with numerous reasons preventing me.  Mostly because I didn't have the time, but there were legit issues with the old WordPress blog on my old host.  Or just call it laziness.

So the new blog engine is BlogEngine.NET, not surprisingly a .NET based blog engine (guess you figured that by the name, huh).  I must say this has been the EASIEST blog engine I've worked with to date.  Conversion couldn't be easier, working with layouts was a snap.  So far its been a very positive experience... including a 1.4.5 upgrade to 1.5.x which took 5 minutes.  Good stuff.

I've also left WebHost4Life as my webhost.  Their renewal was simply too expensive.  I'll continue to give them props for available features but not at their price point.  So I am going to the other end of the spectrum and going with Godaddy.  The price verses feature set seemed right, and so far their control panels have been pretty easy to work with.  Not a single ticket needed to get my site working and fully transferred.  The hardest part was getting DNS transferred, which took me 10 minutes to figure out.   If you can read this, well, guess it worked.  So the total site migration took about 2 hours. 

Oh, and if you were looking for the consulting part of GP Consulting, well, that part of my business has been closed down for years except to service my prior customers.  That doesn't mean there won't be new things coming... 

Hopefully this will the beginning of new rants and raves.