Is Umbraco suitable for a large blog? It seems like the only option for a blog is to install a third-party package like Smart Blog or Articulate. It doesn't seem like these packages have the featureset to match what we currently have in BlogEngine.
Ideally I would like to have one application/CMS to run the entire website, but that may not be realistic. I may need to retain BlogEngine for the blog and then use Umbraco for everything else. How have other people approached this problem?
Although very new, Articulate seems to be the blog of choice for Umbraco 7. As an Umbraco package it is fully integrated into Umbraco, so it can run in the same interface/back office as the website. Performance-wise I think it uses standard Umbraco nodes for content, so will have the same scalability limitations as Umbraco i.e. it should scale pretty well.
In terms of features, is there anything specific missing from Articulate? It's fully open source so it might be possible to add your desired functionality if there's something specific that's required.
Hi, I used to run my blog on BlogEngine.Net and wrote Articulate to support all of the features that I used on my old blog - which was pretty much everything I needed. There may be some edge case needs that BlogEngine.net supports that Articulate doesn't but I guess depends on your needs.
The first concern that I have is that it doesn't manage comments internally. My biggest fear of this, other than change, is that has the potential to negatively impact search engine performance for comment content. Yes, Google can index Disqus content, but from what I've researched it doesn't sound like it's as sure-fire as on-page HTML. Additionally, this means that you cannot search comments as part of the blog search.
My other concern is that we were thinking about going with multiple blogs on the site redesign. It doesn't seem like that is possible with Articulate.
I also have a few questions, and please forgive my ignorance here as I am definitely an Umbraco newbie.
Can you search just within the blog content?
Is it possible to change a post from a Mardown or Rich Text post after it has been created? I would prefer that my editor be a setting, but I'm guessing that this is an Umbraco limitation.
I didn't want to manage comments internally since there are great products like Disqus that do this well. Comment management is a huge task, you have to deal with emails, spam, moderation, approvals, and the list goes on. Articulate out of the box supports 3rd party comment engines but if you wanted to store your comments in your own database and create your own engine that will work just fine, you just need to include your own partial views for comments.
Disqus does allow you to show comments directly in your page markup by using their API. So for your comments partial view, you could make a call to the Disqus API to retrieve them and put them in your markup.
Articulate supports multiple blogs, you can have as many Articulate root nodes as you want - not sure why that doesn't seem possible?
Search is powered by Examine so you can search however you'd like. If you want to convert markdown to rich text that would be pretty easy. Out of the box there is no button that will do this but would be easy to add or use the API. You cannot however go from rich text to markdown.
Using Umbraco for a large blog
Is Umbraco suitable for a large blog? It seems like the only option for a blog is to install a third-party package like Smart Blog or Articulate. It doesn't seem like these packages have the featureset to match what we currently have in BlogEngine.
Ideally I would like to have one application/CMS to run the entire website, but that may not be realistic. I may need to retain BlogEngine for the blog and then use Umbraco for everything else. How have other people approached this problem?
Hi,
Although very new, Articulate seems to be the blog of choice for Umbraco 7. As an Umbraco package it is fully integrated into Umbraco, so it can run in the same interface/back office as the website. Performance-wise I think it uses standard Umbraco nodes for content, so will have the same scalability limitations as Umbraco i.e. it should scale pretty well.
In terms of features, is there anything specific missing from Articulate? It's fully open source so it might be possible to add your desired functionality if there's something specific that's required.
Hi, I used to run my blog on BlogEngine.Net and wrote Articulate to support all of the features that I used on my old blog - which was pretty much everything I needed. There may be some edge case needs that BlogEngine.net supports that Articulate doesn't but I guess depends on your needs.
My blog running Articulate is: http://shazwazza.com
I've imported everything from my old blogengine.net site to this one including comments to Disqus (the importer is all built in to Articulate).
If there's a feature missing from it, let me know and i'll tell you how much work would be involved.
Thanks for the feedback, guys!
The first concern that I have is that it doesn't manage comments internally. My biggest fear of this, other than change, is that has the potential to negatively impact search engine performance for comment content. Yes, Google can index Disqus content, but from what I've researched it doesn't sound like it's as sure-fire as on-page HTML. Additionally, this means that you cannot search comments as part of the blog search.
My other concern is that we were thinking about going with multiple blogs on the site redesign. It doesn't seem like that is possible with Articulate.
I also have a few questions, and please forgive my ignorance here as I am definitely an Umbraco newbie.
Hi,
I didn't want to manage comments internally since there are great products like Disqus that do this well. Comment management is a huge task, you have to deal with emails, spam, moderation, approvals, and the list goes on. Articulate out of the box supports 3rd party comment engines but if you wanted to store your comments in your own database and create your own engine that will work just fine, you just need to include your own partial views for comments.
Disqus does allow you to show comments directly in your page markup by using their API. So for your comments partial view, you could make a call to the Disqus API to retrieve them and put them in your markup.
Articulate supports multiple blogs, you can have as many Articulate root nodes as you want - not sure why that doesn't seem possible?
Search is powered by Examine so you can search however you'd like. If you want to convert markdown to rich text that would be pretty easy. Out of the box there is no button that will do this but would be easy to add or use the API. You cannot however go from rich text to markdown.
PS. I've opened an Articulate discussions forum:
http://our.umbraco.org/projects/starter-kits/articulate/discussions
is working on a reply...