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Selecting a .NET Blog (BlogEngine.net)

I want to take you through my process on selecting this blog engine.

The old site was mostly static pages and I wasn’t too focused on it. I wanted to start sharing more, especially since I’d been doing a lot of Sales Automation wizardry which I thought people would find helpful. I also wanted to do something in .net. I’d just finished up a generic lead processing system in PHP (I’ll link to this post when it’s ready) and I was pretty sick of it, and missing my precious C# (I also didn’t want to get rusty). This meant finding something somewhat current (say, >=.NET 3.5), something ubiquitous, and something Open Source (in case I wanted to tinker/contribute).

Options based on that criteria were more limited than I anticipated. Here’s some of the stuff I rejected before I landed on BlogEngine:

  • Oxite – too old! Last version was 2009! Mentioned Live Writer, if that’s any indication.
  • DasBlog – Still pretty old – 2012. .NET 3.5 – good. Support for OpenAuth/OpenID – also good (but not really necessary). I wanted something that was seeing some recent action.
  • Blogsa – I was starting to feel like 2012 was the golden age of OS .NET blogs. Also, I couldn’t really identify any features :-(.
  • Orchard – I knew about Orchard from my Ektron days, and it fit all the criteria. It’s written by actual MSFT people. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more current, more pedigreed CMS app. That said, it was overkill. I didn’t need a multi-tenant, fully customizable CMS with full localization support, emphasis on module development, etc. I needed a hammer, not a toolbox.

So I found BlogEngine.NET, which really seemed ideal. I would go as far as to call it the .NET cousin to WordPress (if that cousin were socially awkward, had few friends, and you only saw him twice a year at holidays or funerals). Advantages:

  • Current releases
  • IIS7.0/.NET 4.5
  • The download numbers from codeplex weren’t as high as some of the other blogs but the repo was getting daily commits
  • None of the issues seemed like dealbreakers
  • Heavy documentation
  • Some nice extras like DB-Free (XML) storage, a slick looking admin, search & tag cloud
  • BOOM!
I’ll follow up with a post on the installation process. Suffice to say, it was surprisingly simple (actually a pleasure). If you’re reading this, I’m clearly satisfied.