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I’ve been looking for some decent blog software to be used on a windows server with an ASP.Net application. I love wordpress and use it whenever I can, but it’s not so great on a windows server, it works but it’s difficult to implement things like SEO friendly URL’s.
So with a particular site of mine I needed to have a blog that could be linked to the main site which is an ASP.Net 2.0 application and share the same design elements such as header, navigation etc. So not only did it need to have all the features you require in a modern blog software but it needed to be easy to create a custom theme for too.
After much searching I believe I have found the ideal software and best of all, just like wordpress it is free. The software in question is called BlogEngine.Net, you can download it as either a ready to run site or as the source code project. I chose the application version as I really wanted to keep things simple and didn’t want to get into the complexities of compiling or altering any source code.
You can see my implementation of the blog here at my caravan rental site. Once I’d read through the instructions it was pretty straightforward to set up, but you do need to carefully check the user privileges on some of the folders. The only problem I found was that I couldn’t run the software as a subfolder of the main site, I needed to set it up as a separate web with a subdomain. So for example http://www.caravans4let.co.uk/blog was what I ideally wanted but I ended up having to use http://blog.caravans4let.co.uk.
That minor annoyance aside, it was pretty painless to set up my own theme, I was basically able to use my site.master page and CSS file from the main site with just some minor tweaking and after that I was pretty much done.
I’ve looked at quite a lot of .Net blog software including some rather expensive paid versions and I have to say BlogEngine.Net is the best and easiest to set up I have seen so far. If your looking for a windows based blog solution I would highly recommend it.
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utility poster | Jack Humphrey's software bundle said,
[...] Searching For Windows Based Blog Software – I’ve been looking for some decent blog software to be used on a windows server with an ASP.Net application. I love wordpress and use it whenever I can, but it’s not so great on a windows server, it works but it’s difficult to implement … [...]
geum said,
Found your comments while searching for ideas about website + multiuser blog software, so your experience about Wordpress and your transfer to BlogEngine was quite useful. Just one thing, looking at the code for thisd blog I see it still says “, so I guess it’s the blog site that has been re-constructed, tho’ I couldn’t find the definitive confirmation I was expecting.
CMS Matrix gives a whole load of useful info but ploughing a way thru’ 1000+ apps is quite daunting, hence value of your comment. Must say too that I find the BlogEngine site not quite as useful as I would hope for a novice.
Our main problem seems to be defining exactly what we require and then unearthing easy to use software that satisfies these without imposing unexpected constraints for the future. Got a pin I can borrow?
Regards,
Geum
Steve Kinsey said,
Geum,
I’ve just updated the links on this article. On the new version of blogengine.net I found a way to use the proper folder name I wanted instead of the sub domain. Hope this will help
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