I'm sitting here waiting for a trial version of Adobe Photoshop to download, and figured I'd take this time to put in a post.
Now, that I've got this blog setup, and hopefully re-designed soon, I thought I'd talk about how I chose my Blog tool for this site.
Priorities
I'd have to say that my primary objective was to have a blog that was written in a language that I knew well. My choices fell between PHP and ASP.NET C#, and since I have done primarily .NET web development for the past couple years I chose ASP.NET. I wanted something that I could jump and modify or extend if need be. But, there was more to it than just the language. It needed to be well built and organized. I didn't want to be pulling my hair out trying to understand the architecture. Separation of UI and business logic were important.
Decision Making
Based on those guidelines, I narrowed my choices down to a handful of blog engines. First there was dasBlog, which I really like, and I am a big fan of Scott Hanselman, the dasBlog project manager. I cant say that I have a great reason for not going with dasBlog. I guess I just couldn't get a feel for where the project plans to go in the future.
Then, I turned to a couple ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller) blogs. I was led down this route when I found Oxite on the MIX '09 web site. It's a new project, and as they claim on the project's home page "it isn't a finished product". So, I went on over to BlogSvc and downloaded their source code. But, there seemed to be some version conflicts between there .NET MVC and mine. I just downloaded the MVC RC, and somethings just didn't seem right. I'll try again later after they do some updates. I just wasn't up to trouble shooting so early in the process.
Finally, I turned to BlogEngine.NET. It's not MVC, but it is a well-built Web Forms/Provider Model project. Honestly, I'm still wraping my head around MVC, and am at home with the Provider Model these days. What's better is that I downloaded that latest release, opened the web project, ran the Default.aspx page and there it was. No error messages, just enter the Admin password and go. That's exactly what I was looking for! I'm looking forward to jumping into the MVC-based blogs later on, but for now BlogEngine.NET is just what I need.
One thing that is encouraging about BlogEngine.NET is that they are really working hard at making some good design templates available. They have some real nice designs to choose from. Even the default template is nice and simple, and will have to do on my site until I get around to creating my own design.
A final reason I chose BlogEngine is that I could see my self contributing to the project some day, and hope to do so.
