I wrote lt blink gt but it actually got interpreted as a tag, which is funny.

Damn, I was going to make the website nicer, but then people would see the revised website and think, it's not "that" bad, so the app probably isn't "that" good. Just consider yourselves lucky I didn't use the tag.

If it's the #includes that you hate the most, here's a line from the release notes for version 2.9.5: * Moved almost all the code out of the old "inc" files. Now, less than 200 lines of trivial code left in the includes. But what you're really missing is the full text search (based on Lucene.NET). Try it at http://ifdefined.com/btnet, the "search text" at the top of the page.

What version of BugTracker.NET are you using?

I'm the author of BugTracker.NET, but if I were doing a truly one person project I'd use the hosted version of FogBugz, just so as not to have to worry about doing the backups. Free for two users. You wouldn't be able to use it for interacting with your customers though. For that, BugTracker.NET. My own personal next choice would be RedMine. I hate the design philosophy of Mantis, which somebody else recommended.

Hey, I heard that! The code is getting a little better. More stuff in .cs files, less stuff in includes. If think it's funny, though, with the advent of MVC that <% %> imbedded in HTML is back. I had to wait 6 years but it's back!

I'm the author of BugTracker.NET. For sure you can find hosting companies that offer SQL Server. I'm running this demo[^] at GoDaddy.com, for example, and it's just a few bucks a month. I started off developing in a DB agnostic way, but it was hard not to take advantage of SQL features specific to SQL Server. And later, once Microsoft released their free, easy, excellent SQL Server Express, there wasn't much point. For me personally, when I started my app, it was just a little project for me to learn ASP.NET, C#, and other Microsoft technologies. I didn't foresee it becoming so widely used, and I certainly didn't look ahead to it being hosted. But, when I myself played with the idea of hosting BugTracker.NET instances commercially, I did come to learn that it's much cheaper to get a dedicated (virtual) server running Linux than Windows. But following that logic, I should have developed in PHP, not .NET.

ctrager@yahoo.com

That sounds like your ASP.NET and IIS haven't been configured to work together correctly, because IIS is returning code (the "<%@Page..." stuff) to the browser instead of executing it on the server. Google aspnet_regiis.exe, a tool for fixing your installation.

If you like FogBugz, but you prefer free and open source, try BugTracker.NET, at http://ifdefined.com/bugtrackernet.html. It's very easy to install and use. It's heavily inspired by FogBugz (I'm the author). Also comes with a utility similar to FogBugz whereby you can take a screenshot and post with just a few clicks.

Sorry, no. I'd probably go about it by just writing SQL statements like insert into [some BugTracker.NET table] select ..... from [some FogBugz table] You might find it helpful to use "SET IDENTITY_INSERT [some BugTracker.NET table] ON", which allows you to insert rows into a table without SQL Server incrementing the identity column automatically. If you do succeed with your conversion, I'd be grateful if you emailed me your SQL.

To all the folks who told the guy he should start with Google: Are you all saying that the search results from Google are so precisely targeted by the algorithms that there's no need reason to ask actual living breathing human beings? I know from tracking my own BugTracker.NET's page rank (I'm the author) that little differences in the search criteria produce wildly different results. "bug tracker" gets you "BugTracker.NET" as the first on the list, but "bug tracking" gets a different list, with "BugTracker.NET" in around 85th place. So, to the original poster, if you are going to host it yourself, and if you want free, and you just want a tracker, then start with BugTracker.NET. If you want more than a tracker, if you want other project management tools, and you are willing to pay a reasonable price, consider FogBugz. If you want free and you can run apache, consider Trac. If you want maybe Subversion hosting too, take a look at CVSDude/Trac or Unfuddle. I've put together links to discussions like these on bug tracking[^]

Mike - that's for taking the time to respond. Regarding the code full of spagetti and me knowing exactly where everything is... actually, I wish that were true. The code is hard for me too, but I would argue that even if I had done everything right, there is complexity in the requirements/functionality, so there is going to be complexity in the codebase, no matter how well organized. Bug tracking sounds simple, until you throw in configurable workflow, permissions, custom fields, and then the interaction of those things. Then it gets hard. In my blog, at http://www.ifdefined.com/blog/[^], you'll find that a lot of posts are essentially me just whining about complexity. I didn't sit down in 2002 and write the application full blown with all its features. It has evolved. But, something I want to point out is that I have not broken backwards compatibility in those 5 years. I have felt a duty to the people who trusted me enough to depend on my application not to break compatibility. But, as Microsoft can tell you, preserving backwards compatibility also contributes to a complicated codebase. You mention FogBugz. If you think my codebase is daunting, imagine FogBugz. They created their own freakin' programming language to handle their complexity issues: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01b.html[^] For another glimpse at complexity, read the "Status" section from this Jira issue. Jira is a very widely used issue tracking system: http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-1330[^] Regarding the position of the validation error messages, moving them with css, I apologize for not answering that post. I also would not be able to do it using .css. Another developer recently volunteered to help with BugTracker.NET and what I asked him to do was to make the edit_bug.aspx friendly to css positioning. We'll see how that goes. Regarding the way I used syscolumns, well, it's a bad design by me, but because of backwards compatibility issues, I may be stuck with that design. I'm glad you were able to workaround my design mistake. If nothing else, I need to update the docume

Regarding "I wanted something that gives more control over the workflow", this was a weakness of BugTracker.NET. About a month ago, though, I added the file "workflow.cs". There's a stub function in it that BugTracker.NET will call. My function doesn't enforce any rules, but if you replace my function with yours, there's your workflow. You would have to know just enough C# to code some "if" statements. I haven't gotten any feedback on it, so I don't know if anybody is using it yet.

If there isn't already enough contradictory advice in this thread to thoroughly confuse you, and you want still more, I've put together a page of links to discussions on this exact topic, comparisons of issue tracking systems.

I'm the author of BugTracker.NET. This might be the statement that Mike Lang is referring to, from the BugTracker.NET documentation at http://ifdefined.com/doc_bug_tracker_programmers.html#code I started BugTracker.NET in 2002 as a learning project, to teach myself .NET and C#, to get those technologies on my resume. At the time I didn't own Visual Studio, so I went about learning .NET the same way I had learned Java in its early days: I downloaded the SDK, edited files using a text editor, and compiled using the command line. If you work with the SDK and the documentation of for the .NET libraries, you won't even come across the term "code-behind". Code-behind is a Visual Studio concept, not a .NET concept. I didn't know about code-behind when I created BugTracker.NET and so BugTracker.NET does not use that technique. It's not a philosophy. It's just how I happened to start the coding. Mike Lang, I'd be interested in your critique of BugTracker.NET's functionality, as opposed to the coding style.

It does have auto-response. See the "AutoReplyText" in Web.config

I'm the author of BugTracker.NET. I've made some improvements in how BugTracker.NET looks "out-of-the-box", but if you still don't like the appearance, you have a lot of control via css and some other configuration files. Here is more info about customizing the appearance of BugTracker.NET: http://ifdefined.com/doc_bug_tracker_css.html