sBlog.Net
a minimalistic blog engine using the asp.net mvc 3 framework
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In a very few words, sBlog.Net is a minimalistic blog engine. This project is heavily inspired by wordpress, though there are a lot more to come in the following days! Using sBlog.Net, you will be able to do all of the normal activities that you could do in a blog! If I have to describe sBlog.Net in a single sentence, I would say, 'For the love of asp.net mvc and wordpress'!
features
sBlog.Net has a whole set of features like in-built syntax highlighter, social sharing, a commenting system with multiple layers of protection from spam, multiple authors, the ability to change themes with a few clicks, the ability to create themes using multiple methods and many more!
extensibility
sBlog.Net is designed to be highly modular! So, in case you do not like a certain part of the system, you can modify it with a considerably less effort. Even if you are not comfortable with writing code, you can easily setup an instance of sBlog.Net with the help of the instructions, and just work on the user experience side with the help of just css files!
snapshots
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blog home page
this is the blog's homepage. when a visitor enter's the blog's url, this is the page they would see.
an individual post
when a visitor clicks the title of one of the post, they get to see this page.
an individual page
when a visitor clicks on one the pages, they get to see this page, without the blog menus.
A sample post with some javascript code, note that syntax highlighter has to enabled for this feature.
A sample post
Blog's home page listing the posts. The number of posts on the page could be specified using the settings option in the admin section.
Login screen for managing the blog (for blog admin and authors).
"Dashboard page that the admin/ authors get to see once they log in. It lists the number of posts/page and categories/tags. It also provides the ability to view comments under various statuses.
Manage posts page, where you get to manage the posts created by the current user. Similarly, an admin has the ability to manage pages too.
This is the page where you can add a post. You also have the ability to add categories from this page.
This is the page where you can add a page.
This is the settings menu, where you get to manage the blog settings, like the name, caption, theme etc. It's accessible only to the admin user and not the authors.
This is the uploads section, where you get to manage media for your blog. You can use these uploads in your post/page.
An admin user can also manage blog author's and their public posts and also comment.
This is the blog homepage post login. Now, you also get a 'shortcuts' menu, where you get quick links to create posts/page or manage comments.
Shortcuts menu in the expanded state.
theming
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sBlog.Net project comes with 6 default themes. All of the default themes were created using the templates downloaded from the free css templates site, though the ones added are slightly modified from the original. They are:
There is also a theme inspired by the "perfect blemish" theme listed earlier and it is heavily modified from that theme. When you choose this theme, it uses the default templates for the blog. Thus you could create any number of themes that follows this pattern. So, in this method you just create "css", "js", "images" folders.
- un themed
Templates downloaded from this site can be used for free, provided you give them credits, which is already present in the footer. If you wish to use the default templates, please reatin these links. You could pay an amount and remove this information from the footer. Refer to this link for more information about removing these information / links.
Free CSS templates has many more themes that you could use. If you are into html5, check out this site html 5 web templates. Apart from the ones listed here, there are many more sites that offers free templates, provided you give them credits.
Apart from the themes provided, there are 2 ways by which you can also create themes for sBlog.Net. First method is simple. In this method you just have to create the style file and add the image and script files if necessary. Check the Themes\UnThemed folder for an example. For more information, click here.
Second method is comparatively harder. Because in this method, you also have to create the layout pages. As before you create the style, image and script folders and then add 2 layouts - one for the blog posts (_Layout.cshtml) and one for the pages (_LayoutAdmin.cshtml). This method gives you complete control because you get to choose the entire layout, where a certain section goes - like the categories, archives etc. Refer to any other themes for an example. For a quick tutorial, click here.
credits
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This project was made possible with the help of a number of tools, in case I have missed anything, I will constantly update this section as it isn't my intention to miss any of them!
faq
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Yes, of course, we already have wordpress and a number of blog engines in ASP.Net. But, I love wordpress' approach to blogging and so wanted to create something that gives the same experience, using ASP.Net MVC 3, which according to my opinion is one of the best creations of Microsoft! This has been a very good learning experience and I believe it would be the same for all others who are going to experiment with this project. A promise to all of you - this project won't just be a replica all along and you can expect some interesting features to be added in the near future! This project is highly modularized, so that you can easily plug out something and modify them with your own code. Navigating through the poject would also be simple, as it does not attempt to implement a huge number of features or does not use any complicated logic / code.
At the point I started working on this, I was not very proficient/ confident with the Entity Framework. (I am getting better though!). But I did provide ways to replace the current database module with anything else - for instance the entity framework or MySQL or even XML!
Unfortunately, I wasn't aware about Disqus at the time I was designing and coding the system. So in the next releases I plan to include this too.
Sorry, at this point no. But, this is also in the roadmap for tasks to be done in the next release!
There will soon be a blog, where I periodically plan to put some stuff about the design and also about how some of the stuff in here could be changed.
Unfortunately, at this point, yes. There could just be one admin user. But in the next release, you will have the ability to create/use roles. So that, multiple users can be admins and share the burden with blog owner!
Of course! some of the features I have planned to add in the next release are:
- A tag listing page based on usage
An authors page that lists the authors of the blog, with the ability to list the authors posts(github commit)Ability to use the Disquss commenting system instead of the native commenting system(github commit)- Threading support for the native commenting system