Written by: Joe Brinkman
6/12/2007 11:41 AM 

After posting for a couple of years on my DotNetNuke.com blog, I have decided that it was time to start hosting my blog on a dedicated site.  There are a couple of reasons for this decision.  I have felt a bit constrained on DotNetNuke.com. 

Like much of the online world, the blogosphere is a fast moving environment.  There are dozens of tools aimed at making blogging a much richer experience and that simplify the blogging process.  Social networking sites like Digg and DotNetKicks that are aimed at bloggers have been popping up like crazy.  The DotNetNuke blogging module has generally lagged behind the rest of the blogosphere in supporting recent blogging advances.  I always felt like I was fighting with the module just to get a blog posted much less to take advantage of other blogging features.

In addition to the lack of tool support, the policies we put in place on DotNetNuke.com limited the topics that I was free to discuss.  For the most part, this was not a huge deal, but I was constantly wondering if my posts about woodworking or other personal activities were appropriate.  I do not plan to shift the primary focus of my blog, but I have more interests than just DotNetNuke and I don't want to feel constrained.  I want to blog about my passions, whether it is DotNetNuke, .Net, woodworking or even my weekend bike outings.

I also feel that if I am blogging, that I want to get the most out of the experience.  I want to be able to track my subscribers, to include standard articles, to more fully explore webcasting and podcasting, and in general to have more control and visibility over my blogging experience.

Does this mean that I will no longer blog on DotNetNuke.com?  No.  My plan is to blog to my home blog (http://www.theaccidentalgeek.com) and then cross post to DotNetNuke.com.  This will allow me to create my blog using a rich blog editor and then just post the resulting HTML on DotNetNuke.com as well.  This will allow me to easily syndicate my entire feed while also making it easy for DotNetNuke visitors to still get to the content.

I asked Scott Hanselman (DasBlog) and Phil Haack (SubText) for recommendations as to which platform would best suit my needs.  As a result I have chosen SubText as my blogging platform of choice moving forward.  Phil and his project team have done a great job of keeping SubText current with most of the features that I really care about and if there is something missing, I am not afraid to jump in and add my custom feature.  Because I am hosting the site myself, I can do that without impacting anyone else.

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Tags: blogging , subtext , DotNetNuke

Categories: DotNetNuke

Location: Blogs Joe Brinkman