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I'm thinking about installing .Text into my own web-site...

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And maybe the Forums code too... Nothing against www.asp.net, but I'm just thinking it might be interesting to host my own blog... moving seems disruptive though, leaving a large number of my posts here, new ones there.... what do you folks think? Have you thought about hosting your own blog... are you already doing it .... would you never leave the collective?

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  • Anonymous
    August 11, 2004
    I host my own blog. It's easy enough to do.

    I don't think that you will get the same amount of traffic for your site if you host your own. Your dedicated readers will switch their RSS feed when you move. But new readers will be harder to come by.

    Essentially you will be relying on links/trackbacks from other bloggers and on people finding archived articles and deciding to subscribe to your blog based on prior content.

    Having your blog on Asp.NET gets your articles into their main aggregator feed.

    I'm curious. What would you have in your forums section?
  • Anonymous
    August 11, 2004
    Probably just put a forum or two up around my various samples and articles.... I get a lot of one-off email that might be more useful in a discussion forum...
  • Anonymous
    August 11, 2004
    I set up and hosted my own blog as soon as .Text .96 was released because I wanted to, and because it was easy. But my reasons and audience were different. I wanted to have something that my clients and friends could subscribe to which (at least for my main News Category) would be relevant items that they should know about immediately. Most of my clients' POCs have my feed readily accessible through NewsGator.

    So I guess I'm saying I agree with Walt, because while my Google rank instantly went up for certain keywords, it dropped right back off, as others have blogged about. I would say, leave your blog on msdn (and enjoy the notoriety and wide audience) but set up a forum on your site for the so-inclined. Also, note that if your site is .NetNuke, YetAnotherForum plugs in with single sign-on very readily. But I'd guess the ASP.Net Forums code will do that soon enough as well, if not now. Cheers.
  • Anonymous
    August 11, 2004
    "I host my own blog"

    Is it how you describe the act of installing someone else's blog engine? To me, "own blog" should be reserved for those that really wrote their own blog engine, which indeed is an interesting and passionate challenge.
  • Anonymous
    August 11, 2004
    Stephane, I'm not sure if it is just how I'm reading it... but your comment seems oddly rude, considering the innocuous nature of Walt's comment

    "I host my own blog" seems like the perfect description for what Walt does... now, if he had said "I wrote my own blog engine", well that would be different.

    I consider this (http://weblogs.asp.net/duncanma) to be "my blog", and I certainly didn't write the engine. And, as interesting as it might be for a few people.. I can't see why large numbers of people should keep re-inventing the wheel... there are lots of challenging software projects one could apply their efforts against instead of focusing on building this one type of application.
  • Anonymous
    August 11, 2004
    I've just setup blogs at vbCity - http://blogs.vbcity.com">http://blogs.vbcity.com - using .Text for myself, vbCity Leaders and (in future) vbCity members. It is fun and easiest .NET app I installed in the last year or so.

    .Text is great and the only feature it doesn't have is admin page to add new blogs in multi-user setup. But I invested 3 hours into developing a WHS script using ADSI to create new blog in the database, add NT new user and configure FTP home page for the user to upload images/attachments for blog posts. And now it takes me literally few seconds to add a blog.

    As far visibility concerned, yes, you lose some of it since your blog posts will not be included into ASP.NET main feed, but there is .NET Weblogs Archive feed - http://www.activehead.com/DotNetWeblogs/ - you can add your RSS page to. That's what I did for http://blogs.vbcity.com">http://blogs.vbcity.com

    And Google rank, well, it will build up eventually...
  • Anonymous
    August 12, 2004
    Duncan,

    I host my own blog as well. You'll loose some google ranking at first, but that comes back (and it is nice to see your google ranking go up as a result of your content - not just because you're one of the collective pack). And someone like you wouldn't have to worry about it anyway. I'm sure your readers will follow.

    The thing I like best abut hosting my own blog is that I feel it gives me more of my own identity. The URL is my name, it has my own custom skin, etc. And the ability to get into the database has come in handy quite often.

    -Ryan
  • Anonymous
    August 12, 2004
    If a person is self-employed, wants to be self-employed, or wants to pick up side projects from the public, I highly recommend hosting your own blog and integrating the blog as part of your marketing website.

    For self-employed people, having their own blog makes self-publishing a snap and has some attractive search engine marketing advantages that help to bring customers first to their blog and then their marketing website where a customer can hire him/her.

    For someone wanting maximum exposure, particularly if you don't blog a lot, or for someone not interested in having more than just a blog, the community blogs are probably a better medium.

    In the beginning weblogs.asp.net was the best, but it is becoming extremely noisy. Scott is also limiting the number of blogs he links to on the main feed as the list is up to 800 to 1400 blogs. This is bad if you don't blog a lot as the search engine won't find you on the main feed. There are also so many more posts, your post may be knocked off the main feed before Google has a chance to "read" it. Certainly if you don't care about search engine placement this is not a big deal. Most of the readers use an RSS Reader anyway I am sure.

    Given weblogs.asp.net is pretty noisy and has less opportunity for exposure than it used to, one would probably be better off picking a higher quality less chatty blog community that has some exposure.

    Since you 1) blog a lot and probably have good quality posts, and 2) want to do forums and articles as well a blog, you are probably ripe for your own blog integrated into your own website. I would probably wait until Community Server :: Forums comes out though, assuming it will come out soon, since you may not want to get everything just right just to find you have to tear things apart for the new blog engine. Start with the website, forums, and article pages, and hopefully the new blog engine will be out (and free).

    Geez... I apologize for the book i just wrote :)
  • Anonymous
    August 14, 2004
    That was an interesting aspect David. Thanks!