I helped BlogEngine.NET, an open source .NET blogging platform, in 2007 and 2008. I ran my own blog on it at romanclarkson.us, built and adapted themes for it, and put together a ping services list for its XML provider that a third party picked up and credited by name. The official project site, dotnetblogengine.net, exists only on archive.org now.
On August 27, 2007 I posted a new theme, “a remake of a theme from Creative Commons Website,” packaged as thegreenhouse.zip, and asked for help finishing “the xmlroleprovider and CodeSyntaxHighlighter extension.” On September 4, 2007 I posted a second theme, migrated from a CSS template, and asked the community to help polish the CSS. On February 6, 2008 I posted a third theme, Newsstand, described as “NY Times meets BlogEngine.Net,” modified from a dotnetblogengine.net theme called BrightSide to work with the newer widget system.
On February 25, 2008 I posted a curated pingservices.xml file, “a list of ping services that I use with BlogEngine,” for use with BlogEngine.NET’s XML provider. Two weeks later, on March 12, 2008, a developer at Visoft Inc. wrote a post crediting it directly: “I was looking for a list of Ping Services for BlogEngine.NET and came across Roman Clarkson’s post on the topic,” and “Roman has a pingservices.xml file available on his site, which can be downloaded and used with BlogEngine.NET’s XML provider.” He used my XML list as the basis for a SQL Server version he built and shared from his own site.
What I could not confirm
I do not appear on BlogEngine.NET’s own “Team” author page or its official Themes gallery on dotnetblogengine.net, and I am not listed as a Developer or Coordinator on the CodePlex project’s People page (which names madskristensen and RazorAnt as coordinators, and johndyer, martinesmann, rtur and rusvdw as developers). My own blog’s footer at the time read “Original Design by styleshout, adapted by onesoft, then Adapted again by Roman Clarkson,” but that credit is on my own site, so I cannot prove a theme of mine ended up on many other sites. The one credit that is plainly on someone else’s site is the pingservices.xml file, cited by Visoft Inc.
See for yourself
- Visoft Inc., March 12, 2008: “Roman has a pingservices.xml file available on his site”
- romanclarkson.us, February 25, 2008: the original Ping Services for blogs post
- romanclarkson.us, August 27, 2007: The Greenhouse theme
- romanclarkson.us, September 4, 2007: second theme migrated from CSS
- romanclarkson.us, February 6, 2008: the Newsstand theme