One of the many items I took care of with the upgrade the other day was to setup FeedBurner feeds for the CodeKeep blog and each of the language feeds. I made some tweaks to the URL rewriting logic to avoid making everyone manually update all their subscriptions, so hopefully nobody even notices and all continues to work like it has been.

However, if you find something with the feeds is wrong, please contact me and let me know.

Yesterday morning the site upgrade and VS 2008 add-in were released, and then yesterday afternoon I was interviewed about CodeKeep for Code To Live, a cool developer show on MSDN's Channel 9 web site. How about that for perfect timing?

The interview turned out to be much longer than I expected (about 30 minutes), but hopefully it's enjoyable enough to watch all the way through ;-)

After several straight very late nights, I'm able to finally say that the CodeKeep web site has undergone a major overhaul (again). I know it's been through that once or twice before, but I really feel that I got things *more right* this time around. Mass improvements abound, most notably the vastly improved UI to create a better user experience by making things even simpler than they were before (and oh yeah, it's been completely upgraded to .NET 3.5). I think most people will agree the site is so much more aesthetically pleasing now. It has a new logo, it feels softer with more rounded corners and soothing color tones, and I've added some geek humor to the site, which you'll find as you click around. Quite different from where it started and where its been.

As I was working on this upgrade, I realized that for all intents and purposes, CodeKeep is maturing. New users continue to register and code snippets continue to be saved. The last couple months have seen the interest in CodeKeep go up, as evident by the growing number of emails I've received asking where the add-in is for VS 2008 (more on that below). That's a sure sign developers aren't abandoning CodeKeep as they move forward with newer tools. In fact, that tells me they want CodeKeep by their side as they work because it adds value. It's because of this that I've sort of re-dedicated myself to the cause and have busted my butt to take it to the next level.

Aside from the site upgrade, the other big news is the immediate availability of the CodeKeep add-in for VS 2008. I know its a bit overdue, but it's finally done and ready to go. You can actually use the VS 2005 and VS 2008 add-ins on the same machine without any problems (that's what I do), so no matter which version of Visual Studio you're working in, CodeKeep will be there to keep you company.

For this version of the VS 2008 add-in, there is literally no difference between it and the VS 2005 add-in; it even has the old logo. The reason for this is simple: it allowed me to release it much faster than if I tried to revamp everything. I'm learning to release more often, and this is a step in that direction. Also, in the next few days will be another announcement that the add-ins will become open-source projects. I mentioned this several months ago, and now is the time to do that. Getting the developer community involved with the add-ins will allow the add-ins to grow at a much faster pace than my time can provide. Plus, I'm really hoping someone takes the initiative to build a CodeKeep add-in for Eclipse.

One other major piece of functionality released as part of the upgrade is the ability to export your snippets so that you can save them offline. That has consistently been one of the top most requested features, and I'm happy to report it's here. The export is pretty straightforward, as it dumps all your snippets into an XML file. I've already identified a couple things in the export process I want to make better, but this gets the job done. It's only available on the web site for now, but I've already created a task to implement the export process in the add-ins as well.

That's about it for now; more details and info on the horizon. In the meantime, check out the site and download the VS 2008 add-in. You won't be disappointed.

This has been a long time coming. Several months in fact, but it's finally done. In case you haven't realized it yet, the CodeKeep web site has a shiny new look. It's all Web 2.0-ish with gradient colors and rounded corners :-)

As you browse around I think you'll notice that things just feel better overall. For instance, the search box has been moved to the top of every page so that it's always readily available. The sort-of-but-not-really-obtrusive Google text ads have been replace by simpler image-based Google ads at the top and right of each page. The menu has been enhanced to provide simpler navigation. Sortable grids have been added throughout the site to add to the user experience and a new feature has been added that allows you to copy code without all those pesky line numbers.

There are also a number of things you won't see that have been taken care of underneath the hood. Data changes and enhancements have been made, NHibernate has been upgraded to version 1.2, and much code has been refactored for optimizations and better maintainability.

However, there are a couple things that cropped up while making all these changes. For one, I found 634 snippets not tied to any user, which I'm still a bit confused as to how that could happen. And because of that, the data conversion that I performed ignored these snippets (and for all intents and purposes they were ignored anyway since they were not associated to any users). That's kind of a bummer, but not much I can do about it.

Also, I know I blogged awhile back saying that the add-in for VS.NET 2003 would live, but I've went back to my original thought and can now inform you that the add-in for VS.NET 2003 will in fact die a horrible death. It's just too time consuming to go back and make all the changes needed for it to be compatible with the latest version. I understand this will upset some people and I don't blame you, but I feel it's necessary so that progress can be made. Of course, if anyone is interested, I'll send you the code if you want to spend the time making all the necessary changes. Just contact me here.

On the other hand, the add-in for VS2005 has been updated and you'll need to download the latest version before you can use CodeKeep again from within Visual Studio. Just be sure to uninstall any previous versions and you'll be good to go. And by the way, I plan on working on the add-in for VS2008 as it gets closer to RTM.

You'll also find that comments have been removed. This has been a bone of contention for awhile now as many users have been hit hard by the spam trolls. Some even accused me of ignoring their pleas to stop the spam, but that was hardly the case. I just didn't have the time to combat it properly. Plus, some analysis showed that comments were rarely used anyway, so I've decided to get rid of them for good, at least for now. If enough people raise a stink about not having them, then I'll revisit the issue.

So now that this upgrade is complete, there are more features I should be able to get out more quickly, such as the ability to import/export snippets, allowing users to change their email address, giving users an option to set a default language, and changing categories into tags.

Anyway, I hope you find these new changes for the better. I look forward to your feedback.

In an effort to get more changes pushed out soon, there will be some maintenance taking place over the next few days, so if you notice intermittent periods where the site experiences errors, you'll know why.

My hope is that at the end of these maintenance windows you'll have a much more worthwhile site for sharing code snippets.

This is something I've given a lot of thought to the last couple months, and I think it's the right thing to do: I'm going to turn the CodeKeep add-ins into open-source projects, both the VS.NET 2003 version and the VS 2005 version.

This is an important step in the growth of CodeKeep. Up until now I've been the only one working on CodeKeep and like any other side project, it is becoming increasingly hard to set aside time to continue adding new features. So what better way to improve the CodeKeep offering than by moving them into the open-source domain.

I don't know exactly when this will officially occur, but it will be soon. I'll still be involved, and I'm not opening the web site and database, but I'm hoping other people will drive the evolution of the add-ins. I'll probably use CodePlex as the open-source hosting provider, but that's not quite set in stone.

Stay tuned for further announcements on this topic.