Using an Azure Web App to host multiple static html sites

There are a lot of static site generators around and I have been using quite a bunch of them. While I used most of them for this (personal) blog, I have also used some for professional purposes like documenting software and for team and company-wide documentation. Especially Sphinx has proven itself to be quite useful.

I want to create an environment with the following requirements:

• Hosting in an Azure Web App
• Protected by Azure Active Directory
• Every project has it’s own documentation (no merge conflicts between teams)
• Use Sphinx but using other generators is possible

In this post I will show how to create a documentation platform which implements the requirements above with only a few lines of code.

Managing a .NET Service with Blazor, on Windows and Linux

My employee has developed an application which “scrapes” data from systems, processes it and sends it to a central database. This is a WinForms application with a few screens for configurations and inspections. I was looking into different approaches for a new version and dived into the options of using a Windows Service.

I forgot where the exact idea came from but at a certain point I thought: what if I can install Blazor as a UI for a Windows Service. I could configure, start and stop, basically do all kind of things with this service if I have a Blazor Interface. I read something about systemd services with .NET too, so I could even create a cross-platform version (not that there is any need for Linux, but just because I can).

Well, after a few hours, I got it working so, in this post I will show you how to create a cross-platform service that can be installed on Windows (Service) and Linux (systemd) and be managed with Blazor.