Since development of DasBlog petered out in 2012, and since I have an entire (size A1) Azure VM dedicated solely to hosting The Daily Parker, I've been looking for a new blog engine for this blog.
The requirements are pretty broad:
- Written in .NET
- Open source or source code available for download
- Can use SQL Server as a data source (instead of the local file system, like DasBlog)
- Can deploy to an Azure Web App (to get it off the VM)
- Still in active development
- Modern appearance and user experience
See? Look-and-feel is in there somewhere. But mainly I want something I can play with.
I'm still evaluating them. This list was really helpful, and pointed me towards the successor to DasBlog, BlogEngine.NET. Mads Kristensen's newest blog engine, MiniBlog, has potential, but it doesn't seem ready for prime time yet.
The changes will come at some point in the next few months, assuming I have time to play with some options and modify the chosen engine to support a few features I want, like time zone support and location tagging. I also want to see about adding completely new features, like Google Timeline integration, or private journals and events, which require encryption and other security measures that blog engines don't usually have. Not to mention the possibility of using DocumentDB as a data source...
Stay tuned. The Daily Parker's 10th birthday is coming in November.