10 minutes ago we released the first version of BlogEngine.NET for anyone to download and use. This is very exciting to me because I’ve spent many hours during the last couple of months designing and coding in my spare time.

The release

We have been using CodePlex as a code repository and we also use it to host the release and help files. It has a nice discussion forum and issue tracker that has been used heavily by the beta testers. The repository is very impressive and it hooks directly into Visual Studio 2005 by a free download of Team Explorer. I can highly recommend it for anyone interested in starting an open source project.

Official website

The official website www.dotnetblogengine.net has also been released a couple of days ago and here you’ll find a lot of information, new themes and of course the team blog. The site is built 100% upon the BlogEngine.NET 1.0 release.

History

BlogEngine.NET was started out of the need for a simple ASP.NET 2.0 blog platform, that was easy to modify, extend and theme – a blog that didn’t needed an expensive SQL Server installation and was so simple that it didn’t needed 10 Visual Studio projects.

For six months I played with the idea, but it was first when I pitched it to Michal Talaga that it took off. We created the overall architecture and design, but not long after, Michal ran out of spare time and I was left alone with the project. Al Nyveldt came to the rescue, and soon also Brian Kuhn and Mauricio Quiros was part of the team and now things really got going.

After a month of high pace development, we came to realize that we needed help on the search algorithm so my co-worker Claus Christensen stepped up to the plate. Also the UI design of the admin section needed work, so Victor Rivero volunteered and designed the coolest looking admin section.

Today, the core team consists of Al, Brian, Mauricio and I with special thanks to Michal, Claus and Victor. That’s a very international team covering United States, Costa Rica, Spain, Poland and Denmark. Don’t get my started on the time zone issue :)

The project is only 2½ months old, but I have been running it on this website for two since the alpha release only 14 days after kick-off.

Roadmap

We look forward to keep the versions flowing at a steady pace and we already have a roadmap for the next 5 versions. The next version is planned for release already this summer.

The last couple of months working on BlogEngine.NET have been hectic and we have come a long way since we started. A lot of features have been suggested by the fast growing community and early adopters and we have tried our best to accommodate them all. The BlogEngine.NET team and I are very pleased to see so many people are going live with BlogEnginge.NET as their main blog engine and we want to thank all of you.

New features

A lot of new features have been implemented so far and some are still to come. New themes have also been designed so there should be something for every taste. If you want to create your own theme, it has gotten much easier and much more powerful than before.

Website

Within the next couple of weeks, we will launch the official BlogEngine.NET website with full documentation, tutorials, tips ‘n tricks and much more. The site will of course run on BlogEngine.NET.

Release

In around the same time as the website launches, BlogEngine.NET will be released in several different versions.

• Visual Studio solution with full source code
• Web project for easy upload
• Web project as an installer file

Support

The website will be the starting point for all support and we will make sure to provide all the information needed to answer almost any question. In the case you won’t find the answer on the site, you are able to get in direct contact with the members of the team. More on that later.

Because of the very frequently change sets we release on CodePlex, it will be very difficult to do support on all of them. So we are only going to provide support and write documentation for the official releases. Meanwhile, we try to help out and answer questions from everyone who is running the beta bits. The roadmap of the next couple of releases will be published after the first release.

So far so good

Up until now, everything has been going well and at a phenomenal pace. The original principles about creating a full featured, light weight, simple blog engine with no use of third-party assemblies have been achieved. We just need to get the last couple of things in place.