BlogEngine.NET - open source blogging platform

While the most popular blogger platforms remain Wordpress and Blogger, there are much more on the market, trying to get their audience and create the substantial marketing niche with mixed results.

Today, we would like to present BlogEngine.NET - an innovative open source blogging platform developed with ASP.NET.

Here's a short list of all the features of BlogEngine.NET platform:

1. Plug ’n play. BlogEngine.NET is very easy to setup and customize. To make it work, just upload the files to an ASP.NET 4.0 web server and you’re ready to start writing. So, web server should support ASP.NET 2.0 and write permissions on the App_Data folder. No database configuration, just plug ‘n play. BlogEngine.NET uses XML to store all posts, pages etc. by default. If you prefer to use a database, a generic Database Blog Provider is included that will allow you to store data in most standard databases -- SQL Server, MySql, SQLite, VistaDB, etc.
2. Full featured. BlogEngine.NET comes with all the features you would expect from a modern blog engine as well as new unique features such as AJAX comments and screenshot trackbacks.
3. Web 2.0. BlogEngine.NET features social bookmarks, OpenSearch support, XFN tags, AJAX, FOAF, SIOC, APML, Gravatars, coComments, tag cloud, Google sitemap and other so called Web 2.0 features.
4. Referrer stats. The referrer statistics enables you to see which websites link to you, so you can follow up with comments or just to have fun. This feature is a real time killer that you cannot live without.   
5. Cool widgets. There is a variety of cool widgets that such as an AJAX post calendar or a blogroll that automatically retrieves the latest posts from each blog and displays the title beneath the blog. Most of the controls are configurable from the admin section.
6. Advanced comment system. Comments are a very important part of a blog, so BlogEngine.NET features a very advanced commenting system in AJAX that supports country flags, live preview, Gravatars, coComments – all of which can easily be modified in the admin section.
7. Full syndication suite. BlogEngine.NET supports syndication feeds in any possible location. You can find feeds on comments, categories, authors and a main feed. Both RSS 2.0 and ATOM 1.0 are fully supported.
8. Trackbacks and pingbacks. All outgoing links from the posts is tracked- and pinged back, so your blog will get listed in the comments on the linked website if it supports it. When a new post is created, BlogEngine.NET automatically pings Technorati, Feedburner, Ping-o-Matic etc.
9. Search. The search capability of BlogEngine.NET is one of the most advanced and it even allows the visitors to search in the comments. Everything about the search can be configured in the admin section.
10. Standalone pages. Besides regular blog posts, BlogEngine.NET supports the creation of static pages that exist outside the blog chronology. Pages are useful for all kinds of information about you or your blog.
11. Multi-author support. BlogEngine.NET fully supports multiple authors to write posts on the same blog. Visitors are then able to subscribe to the individual author’s RSS feed or view only the posts from their favorite author.
12. Cool themes. BlogEngine.NET comes with some very cool themes for you to choose from. If you want to modify or create a new theme you can do so easily with just a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.
13. XHTML compliance. All the controls in BlogEngine.NET are 100% XHTML 1.0 compliant. All posts you write automatically become compliant thanks to the tinyMCE text editor.
14. Extendable. BlogEngine.NET is built from the ground up using nothing but C# and ASP.NET 4.0 all with simplicity in mind. It means that you can write new controls and themes by using the skills you already have as a .NET developer.

Developers’ website: http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/

Latest software downloading page: http://blogengine.codeplex.com/releases/view/87769

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Update 12-30-13: BlogEngine.Net released beta of its latest version 2.9.

What is New:

* Completely redesigned admin UI based on Bootstrap framework.

* New standard theme, also Bootstrap based, with clean and beautiful design that is easy to extend and modify

* Improvements to theme layouts (separate single post and page templates, navigation template etc)

* New light-weight admin editor

* Admin UI uses AngularJS and SPA (single page application) techniques to talk to back-end

* Added some order to the chaos with ASP.NET Web API and Repository Pattern

Requirements:

* IIS 7 and up, integrated mode

* Full trust for website in IIS