I miss WordPress. I miss the fact that it would save my work periodically, and that if my session timed out while the I was writing a blog, it would be there when I logged back in as an unpublished daft. I miss having my categorised posts. I miss having tags to tell me what I've written about. Even Google seems to prefer my old blog, old pages that don't exist are returned where these ones sit in anonymity.
It's not that DotNetNuke isn't good, because it is. It's powerful and has a load of really good add-ons and…it just isn't WordPress when it comes to blogging.
All that said, I've burned my bridges – my web host is .NET only. Somehow I need to find some blogging software in .NET that is free, open source and comes close to WordPress.
Perhaps it portends a slightly fruitless search when my first result takes me to a blog post from 2005 with the same lament, why can't I find some .NET blogging software that's as good as WordPress?
Ever the optimist, here's my (very) shortlist I am going to look at:
BlogEngine.Net – The most promising bit of .Net blogging software I have seen, could it be a WordPress equivilent for MS junkies?
Community Server Express – Certainly mature, certainly powerful, but I get the feeling I'll end up with the same frustrations and a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.
dasBlog – Not even sure if this is still developed, it's written in .Net 1.1 but it looks quite mature.
BlogEngine.net seems promising, but I am trying to find out if it even holds a candle to WordPress. I mean I just jumped through hoops installing PHP and MySql on my Windows 2003 server, and now I feel so totally powerless that I have to deal with an "alien" language. We’ll just have to wait and see.