How to convert theme to BlogEngine.NET part 2

This is a second in the series of tutorials on theme building with [BlogEngine](http://dotnetblogengine.net/) (go to [part one](http://rtur.net/blog/post/2010/09/05/How-to-convert-theme-to-BlogEngineNET.aspx)). This time I’ll get search functionality up and running. [BlogEngine](http://dotnetblogengine.net/) has search widget and server-side control to add search really easy to the blog

How to convert theme to BlogEngine.NET

With summer behind us, you might want to change things a little bit to celebrate a new season. Like buy a new shoes or, may be, change a theme on the blog. I decided to do the later. My schedule is quiet busy, so I’ll do it in several steps and will share tips, tricks and findings with anybody interested.

Flickr Widget Updated

Few people mentioned that my [FlickrBar](http://rtur.net/blog/post/2008/03/24/BlogEngine-Widgets-Tutorial.aspx) widget for [BlogEngine.Net](http://dotnetblogengine.net/) got out of sync with Widgets framework after framework got interface change. I have updated widget to work with latest releases including 1.6.0 and 1.6.1, you can download it using link below.

This is hot!

Sorry about post title, could not resist :) You probably saw these "new" and "hot" links next to list items all over the place. Something was added or updated and it makes sense to put an indicator that clearly shows this. I wanted to do it for [list of extensions](http://dotnetblogengine.net/page/extensions.aspx) on [BlogEngine](http://dotnetblogengine.net/) site, so that when something new added anyone could see it right away, because list is pretty large.

Desktop vs Web Email Clients

About a month ago I re-discovered that you can actually run email client on desktop and unexpectedly liked it. That is odd - I distinctly remember some kind of pain associated with this activity in the recent past, so I tried to sort this out. Mainly for myself, but may be someone else will find this useful or amusing.

Improving comment management

Looking at stats in several [BlogEngine.Net](http://dotnetblogengine.net/) 1.6 based sites, it seems like Akismet scores around 80% in accuracy on average, killing some 8 out of 10 spam comments. Which is pretty good but not outstanding. "Stop forum spam" filter blocks may be another 5%. Still, quite a lot of spam comments get through the filters.

Custom Filters in BlogEngine 1.6

Spam comments are annoying and sometimes looking at comment allowed by Akismet or some other anti-spam service you think – I’m sure I would do better. It is just so hard to get the plumbing in or I would made my very own solution. With [BlogEngine.Net](http://dotnetblogengine.net/) 1.6 it is not, you can easily implement your own anti-spam filter

BlogEngine.NET now at version 1.6

After few delays new version of [BlogEngine.Net](http://dotnetblogengine.net/) has been released. Although this release is mostly incremental with minimum breaking changes, there are quite a few improvements, enhancements and bug fixes to make it worthwhile for those stuck on previous versions to upgrade

Some Thoughts on Poll Results

One real surprise for me was that not many people use [BlogEngine](http://dotnetblogengine.net/) as their sandbox and playground. To me as a developer from the beginning it was mostly a toy and only over time it grew up into something bigger with responsibilities attached, so I’m sort of impressed.

About RTUR.NET

This site is all about developing web applications with focus on designing and building open source blogging solutions. Technologies include ASP.NET Core, C#, Angular, JavaScript and more.