Scott's post about a blog's heartbeat, and his Paint.NET template to create your own heartbeat image tag gave me the idea to try creating my own custom web control. For a non-web developer like me, that was fun. The following zip file contains the control, sources, and sample web page for testing.
PostsPerMonth.zip
Feel free to play with it! Don't forget to clean up the "ppm" subfolder when you change the image rendering function. This folder must be writable by the ASPNET user.
To use it in your page, register the control:
<%@ Register TagPrefix="slim" Namespace="SlimCode.Web.Controls"
Assembly="SlimCode.Web.Controls.PostsPerMonth" %>
And declare your instance:
<slim:PostsPerMonthImage runat="server" Text="martinplante.com"
PostsPerMonth="10" />
It will generate an image in the "ppm" subfolder, if this image is not already there.
Have fun!