My weblog recently died... :-( Pressed the wrong buttons, had a bad day, i do'nt know what went wrong. So I need to start all over again.
That takes me to the question, which blog platform should I use. Maybe a stupid question to ask, everyone is using Umbraco.. right? But if I look at a couple of blogs out there I see that not everyone is using Umbraco...!? And as I played a little with Wordpress this morning I ask myself the question: what shall I do? Shall I use Umbraco as I tell people always that it is the best system for everything, or use a system like Wordpress because it is simple to use and has a lot to offer related to blogging out of the box.
Any suggestions?
What I like to know is: which system do you use and if it is not Umbraco, why did you choose for it?
Although I am currently building my website ( and have built a lot of my clients websites ) using Umbraco. I have used Blogger as it was a case of a couple of clicks and it's up and running and I didn't have time to setup my own hosting etc when I first looked at setting up the blogs. Now I will probably keep the Umbraco focused blog with Blogger as it helps with inbound links into my own sites.
I agree with Chris, but I prefer WordPress for blogging (not for large scale CMS's, though! -- two different paradigms). I prefer having the freedom to control all aspects of the page; and a hosting account for a small WP blog is cheap.
I am also loving Blog4Umbraco. Especially because I didn't need anything fancy. I built in the code display javascript and the recaptcha for the comments. Other than that it mostly did what I wanted. With some styling it fit my site perfectly.
Mind you, it is some more manual work than other platforms, but I love being in complete and total control.
Another point on the blogs is that the blogger site seems to be indexed by Google extremely fast, i.e. within a matter of hours of a new post it will quite often be findable in their index, possibly related to the fact Google own Blogger? I don't have experience with other blog engines so I cannot give a comparison, it would be interesting to hear from others their experience with indexing speed?
If you're an ASP.NET lover don't forget about Blogengine.NET, full featured blog with a good codebase & community & basic support for "pages". For heavy bloggers I would use that. Umbraco with Blog4Umbraco is a better choice for a business website with a blog attached.
WordPress all the way! Reason? It's a blogging platform... made by bloggers for bloggers. It's totally buzzword compliant - straight out of the box.
Comment spam-protection via Akismet (although you do need to register an account on WP.com)
Then there's the plug-ins ... what can I say, whatever you can think of, there's most likely a plug-in for it! (best of all it's all open-source and "hackable")
With all that said, my biggest problem with WordPress is that it's so popular that it's highly vulnerable - many millions of users - it's big target for hackers. Hence all the security problems. But if you stay up to date, then the risks are lower (which is so easy now with the built-in auto-upgrade functionality)
... then for non-blogging sites, there's Umbraco! :-D
My blog - creativewebspecialist.co.uk is built with Umbraco (think v3.something) with custom XSLT/templates & controls to suit my own needs rather than any blogging platfrom restricting me.
Then I think I will give Wordpress a try. Although it stil feels a bit unnatural, using a PHP product while being an ASP.NET developer. Although choosing for Wordpress feels more like choosing for a product rather than choosing for a language. At the other hand, choosing for Umbraco as a blogging platform will also give me the opportunity to build plugins and modules that can also be used on non-blogging websites that I create. So that could be a win-win.
Most important for me is the amount of time I would like to spend setting up my blog, maintaining and extending it. Most of the time there are also customers waiting... so I think an easy system as Wordpress is not a bad choice after all.
I have been happy Wordpress user for few years now. If I would start bloging now I would probably setup in wordpress.com so I would not even have to think about updates.
Although it stil feels a bit unnatural, using a PHP product while being an ASP.NET developer. Although choosing for Wordpress feels more like choosing for a product rather than choosing for a language. At the other hand, choosing for Umbraco as a blogging platform will also give me the opportunity to build plugins and modules that can also be used on non-blogging websites that I create. So that could be a win-win.
If you're a .NET developer, it does matter what framework you use for your blog; and then again, it doesn't. Frameworks can become unproductively insular. WordPress is a "best practice" implementation of a blogging system, so there may be value in seeing how it's done in WP/LAMP and cherry-picking the best aspects of that system for use in .NET/umbraco. I generally wish I saw more good-idea stealing and less framework chauvinism, all around.
Which blog platform do you use?
My weblog recently died... :-( Pressed the wrong buttons, had a bad day, i do'nt know what went wrong. So I need to start all over again.
That takes me to the question, which blog platform should I use. Maybe a stupid question to ask, everyone is using Umbraco.. right? But if I look at a couple of blogs out there I see that not everyone is using Umbraco...!? And as I played a little with Wordpress this morning I ask myself the question: what shall I do? Shall I use Umbraco as I tell people always that it is the best system for everything, or use a system like Wordpress because it is simple to use and has a lot to offer related to blogging out of the box.
Any suggestions?
What I like to know is: which system do you use and if it is not Umbraco, why did you choose for it?
Hi Martijn,
I currently use blogger.com for my blogs:
Narrowboat Blog and the Umbraco one: http://blog.vizioz.com
Although I am currently building my website ( and have built a lot of my clients websites ) using Umbraco. I have used Blogger as it was a case of a couple of clicks and it's up and running and I didn't have time to setup my own hosting etc when I first looked at setting up the blogs. Now I will probably keep the Umbraco focused blog with Blogger as it helps with inbound links into my own sites.
Cheers,
Chris
I agree with Chris, but I prefer WordPress for blogging (not for large scale CMS's, though! -- two different paradigms). I prefer having the freedom to control all aspects of the page; and a hosting account for a small WP blog is cheap.
I recently used the blog4umbraco package for a client's site and found it very easy to integrate and modify to suit.
I am also loving Blog4Umbraco. Especially because I didn't need anything fancy. I built in the code display javascript and the recaptcha for the comments. Other than that it mostly did what I wanted. With some styling it fit my site perfectly.
Mind you, it is some more manual work than other platforms, but I love being in complete and total control.
I also use Blog4Umbraco for my blog and it works great.
Another point on the blogs is that the blogger site seems to be indexed by Google extremely fast, i.e. within a matter of hours of a new post it will quite often be findable in their index, possibly related to the fact Google own Blogger? I don't have experience with other blog engines so I cannot give a comparison, it would be interesting to hear from others their experience with indexing speed?
Chris
If you're an ASP.NET lover don't forget about Blogengine.NET, full featured blog with a good codebase & community & basic support for "pages". For heavy bloggers I would use that. Umbraco with Blog4Umbraco is a better choice for a business website with a blog attached.
I use the awesome BlogEngine.NET for my blog
WordPress all the way! Reason? It's a blogging platform... made by bloggers for bloggers. It's totally buzzword compliant - straight out of the box.
Comment spam-protection via Akismet (although you do need to register an account on WP.com)
Then there's the plug-ins ... what can I say, whatever you can think of, there's most likely a plug-in for it! (best of all it's all open-source and "hackable")
With all that said, my biggest problem with WordPress is that it's so popular that it's highly vulnerable - many millions of users - it's big target for hackers. Hence all the security problems. But if you stay up to date, then the risks are lower (which is so easy now with the built-in auto-upgrade functionality)
... then for non-blogging sites, there's Umbraco! :-D
Wordpress for blogging and Umbraco for (almost) everything else!
Wordpress is very simple to use, easy to install, lots of plugins, free templates, very cheap hosts etc. etc.
I'd go with Wordpress if it's just a blog and nothing else. It's stellar.
For anything else, I'm biased :-D
My blog - creativewebspecialist.co.uk is built with Umbraco (think v3.something) with custom XSLT/templates & controls to suit my own needs rather than any blogging platfrom restricting me.
I'm also on Wordpress, when it comes to blogging. For everything else, it's Umbraco off course.
I actually thought of moving my blog from wordpress to Umbraco, but haven't done it yet. And I'm not sure if I will ever do.
Wordpress is just so easy to use when it comes to blogging, and there is a s*** load of plugins to use for free.
/Kim
Thanks for all your replies!
Then I think I will give Wordpress a try. Although it stil feels a bit unnatural, using a PHP product while being an ASP.NET developer. Although choosing for Wordpress feels more like choosing for a product rather than choosing for a language. At the other hand, choosing for Umbraco as a blogging platform will also give me the opportunity to build plugins and modules that can also be used on non-blogging websites that I create. So that could be a win-win.
Most important for me is the amount of time I would like to spend setting up my blog, maintaining and extending it. Most of the time there are also customers waiting... so I think an easy system as Wordpress is not a bad choice after all.
Wise choice!
It's really awesome to try something completely new every once in a while. A new platform, a new language.
There's no silverbullet in Web CMS and if for nothing you'll always get inspired.
I rolled my own blog engine on top of Umbraco and LINQ to Umbraco :P
www.aaron-powell.com is almost completely composed of LINQ to Umbraco
I have been happy Wordpress user for few years now. If I would start bloging now I would probably setup in wordpress.com so I would not even have to think about updates.
If you're a .NET developer, it does matter what framework you use for your blog; and then again, it doesn't. Frameworks can become unproductively insular. WordPress is a "best practice" implementation of a blogging system, so there may be value in seeing how it's done in WP/LAMP and cherry-picking the best aspects of that system for use in .NET/umbraco. I generally wish I saw more good-idea stealing and less framework chauvinism, all around.
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