mca blog

now that things are pretty stable (codebase-wise), i'm putting together a list of 'next step's for the framework. here's what i have so far:

• add support for feeds
  this will include publishing a feed from the blog (or other data source) as well as the ability to consume feeds from other sources. consuming feeds will also mean support for caching the feed locally and transforming it as a standard data source.
  
• add support for external editors
  most likely this will be in the form of the metaWeblog API. i figure the ATOM format is really more 'geek-friendly' but the metaWeblog API has been around for several years and there's lots of support for it 'in the wild.' I'm thinking of using MSFT's Live Writer as a test-bed for my implementation, too.
  
• add support for handheld posting
  this would allow me to post from my moto-q phone or any other html-aware small form-factor device. i think this means a pure html approach (no javascript). shouldn't be too much of a problem. the authentication might take some thinking (a simple user/password screen that does the real basic auth on the server?), tho. also, it will be a post-only pattern (no editing existing posts, deleting, etc.) that does not support markup (no p-tags, et al).
  
• add support for DIGEST auth
  this has been on my list for a while. it'll be a bit gnarly (my BASIC auth pattern is kinda buried into the code now)so i've put it off for a while. but i have a working example of DIGEST support for C#/ASP.NET already. so it'll be a relatively boring (i hope) day or two of hacking up the code and getting all the bugs out.
  
• move users and auth to db
  current the user list (small) and permissions list (kinda growing) is stored in two XML files. this works well for now and is easy to work with (and cached, too). eventually, this should be moved to the SQL-DB, tho. not a big rush on this one. it's another example of something that will happen behind the scenes.
  
• add SSL support
  first, i need to post the code to a public server. second, i need to get a simple SSL cert installed. finally, i need to make sure my existing code works well with SSL. should be no big deal. the only 'magic' might be getting the exyus framework to force SSL for certain URLs. not sure if that's needed, but i can see benefits.

well, that should keep me busy for a while!