BlogEngine.NET Hosting: Compare Hosting

What is BlogEngine.Net?

BlogEngine.NET is a powerful blogging platform offering exceptional customization, simplicity, extendibility, and innovation. Written in ASP.NET, Blog Engine is optimized for Windows servers and the .NET framework.

BlogEngine.NET is designed to be easily customized. Like other blogging platforms, BlogEngine.NET offers many different themes, widgets, and plugins. Also, since it’s open-source, if you have .NET programming skills you have complete control of every aspect of the site and can make it your own with custom themes, widgets, and plugins.

If you’re looking for highly customizable a blogging platform writtein in ASP.NET and optimized to run on Windows servers BlogEngine.NET may be just what you’re looking for.

How do I install BlogEngine.NET?

There are hosting companies that specialize in Windows servers and hosting BlogEngine.NET powered websites.The easiest way to install BlogEngine.NET is to select a hosting company optimized for BlogEngine that offers one-click installation.

If one-click installation isn’t available from your hosting provider you can always manually install the application.

• First, you’ll have to download the installation files from Codeplex.
• Next, you’ll have to unzip the downloaded folder and upload the files to the appropriate directory on the server.
• The next steps will require more technical knowledge as you set the uploaded folder as a .NET application so that the server will recognize it as such, and then give the application rights to write to the App_Data folder.

If the manual installation steps sound tough, don’t sweat it. Get in touch with your hosting provider and they should be able to walk you through the process. Once you’ve done all of that just navigate to the site and log in. Detailed installation instructions can be found at the Codeplex documentation site that hosts the application files.

Advantages of BlogEngine.NET

Simple But Feature Rich

• Full editing and creation of pages that are not posts
• Modify theme directly on master pages and user controls
• Extendable: Write new controls and themes
• Code syntax highlighting
• Tag cloud

Use and Share Extensions

It is easy to extend this platform. You can share your code with other users or use their extensions. BlogEngine.NET smoothly handles extensions and they truly enhance the blogging experience.

Cool Themes, Easy Changes

If you have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS then BlogEngine.NET is your territory. It is easy to figure out how to alter the look and feel of the theme by just moving things around. Even a beginner can easily learn to change and create their own themes.

Simple Installation

BlogEngine.NET allows plug and play setup. Upload the files to an ASP.NET 4.0 webserver and its ready to use. No databases, no hassles.

Full featured

BlogEngine.NET has all of the essential items you find in the most popular blogging platforms and many unique features.

Polished and Smooth Widgets

Full cache of widgets. A hefty number of options let you choose widgets for quotes to poll to feeds.

Complete Comment RSS

BlogEngine.NET includes a Site Wide Comment RSS so one feed for all your comments gives you streamlined control. Individual post comment RSS is also handy.

Tracking and Pinging Enabled

Outgoing links are tracked and pinged. You can find your blog listed in the comments on the linked website. BlogEngine.NET automatically pings Technorati, Feedburner and Ping-o-Matic each time you create a post.

Search

An advanced search capability on BlogEngine.NET lets visitors search in the comments. Search is entirely configurable through the admin section and you can create custom searches for easy content and post location.

Standalone pages

Create static pages in addition to regular blog posts. Pages are another useful tool to get your blog and content distributed.

Complete XHTML compliance

All the controls in BlogEngine.NET are 100% XHTML 1.0 compliant.

Support and Community

The BlogEngine.NET community is a loaded with good information that lets a beginner create a visually appealing and high performance blog. A strong community of users are welcoming and supportive.

Advanced tutorials on running BlogEngine.NET are easy to understand and will allow you to use the advanced functionality of the platform with ease. More and more tutorials are being added on a regular basis to help you take full advantage of this easy to use and powerful blogging platform. You’ll find potential solutions, be able to post questions and connect directly with the folks who know and are always ready to help.

Contribute to Open Source

If you have an extension, theme or widget of your own you can upload it to the BlogEngine.NET online gallery. Other users will be able to enjoy the benefits of your work and adaptations. If you have .net developer skills and can build it as a NuGet it will be tested and potentially added to the list of packages available. Add a package feed and you can watch for updates along with other’s new development work. This open source blogging platform becomes better with each new development.

What are some alternatives to BlogEngine.NET?

BlogEngine.NET is the leading ASP.NET blogging platform. However, there are other options in the .NET framework to consider. Some other popular ASP.NET projects that support blogging include dasBlog, Subtext, AtomSite, and Orchard. However, within the ASP.NET world, BlogEngine.NET is the market leader.

If you are also considering applications outside of the ASP.NET framework there are several excellent options. The most popular blogging platform, and one which has grown to the point that it is the backbone of a significant portion of the web, is WordPress. WordPress is the market leader in the number of themes offered, available plugins, ease of use and installation, and quality of the admin panel. A few more options you might also consider are Joomla and Drupal among many others.

BlogEngine.NET vs WordPress

WordPress is an amazing tool, and a great choice for most blogs (or really just about any website). However, there are times when BlogEngine.NET is the better choice. It comes down to three things:

What features are you looking for? Are there features offered by BlogEngine.NET that you can’t get from WordPress?

If you plan to dig into the program files or build your own custom theme are you more familiar with PHP or ASP.NET? WordPress is written in PHP and BlogEngine in ASP.NET. If you’re an ASP.NET programmer going with technology you already know might be the right choice.

Do you plan to use pre-built themes? Do you want a lot of theme options? While BlogEngine.NET does offer quite a few themes no other platform out there can compare to the number of themes available for WordPress.

BlogEngine.Net Hosting

Hosting options are plentiful for BlogEngine.Net. Compare pricing, location, features along with the important ratings and reviews factors to make the best choice.