{"id":2114,"date":"2012-10-11T23:48:33","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T06:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/webdev\/2012\/10\/11\/blogengine-net-and-windows-azure-web-sites\/"},"modified":"2022-08-10T06:06:02","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T13:06:02","slug":"blogengine-net-and-windows-azure-web-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/dotnet\/blogengine-net-and-windows-azure-web-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"BlogEngine.NET and Windows Azure Web Sites"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Windows Azure Web Sites team has been hard at work looking at various applications and working with vendors and community contributors to add some great applications to the web sites gallery. If you\u2019re a blogger and you\u2019d like to get started for free with a simple, yet extensible blogging tool, you might want to check this out. Starting this week you can install BlogEngine.NET<\/a> into a free instance of a Windows Azure Web Site. I\u2019ll walk you through the process in this post. <\/p>\n

The Gallery<\/h2>\n

Windows Azure Web Sites makes it easy to get started with a new web site, and you can\u2019t beat the price and the ability to upgrade your horsepower whenever you need (or to downgrade whenever you don\u2019t<\/strong> need it). The web application gallery in the Windows Azure portal adds the sugary sweet ability to get up and running with a completely-built and pre-configured application in seconds<\/strong>. In most cases you won\u2019t even need to write a line of code. Think of all those hours of your life you\u2019ve spent configuring a CMS or blogging tool to get it working on your server \u2013 the gallery provides point-and-click creation and deployment of many of these types of tools. <\/p>\n

Below, for instance, you can see how easy it is for me to start building a brand new blog using BlogEngine.NET in Windows Azure. <\/p>\n

\"be.net-1\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Installing BlogEngine.NET<\/h2>\n

Once you select BlogEngine.NET and click the next arrow button, the gallery installer will need to get some pretty basic information from you and provision the site. The next step in the installation process gets your site\u2019s name, which will serve as the prefix in the [prefix].azurewebsites.net<\/em> manner.<\/p>\n

\"be.net-2\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Since BlogEngine.NET\u2019s default storage mechanism doesn\u2019t require a database (but you can, of course, customize your installation later to use SQL if you\u2019d like), but that\u2019s basically the last step in the process<\/strong>. Two steps, and a brand new BlogEngine.NET blog will be created and deployed into Windows Azure Web Sites. Below you\u2019ll see how the portal reflects the status of the deployment.<\/p>\n

\"be.net-3\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

In a few moments, the site will be completely deployed, and by clicking on the browse button at the bottom of the portal when you\u2019ve got your freshly-deployed blog selected\u2026<\/p>\n

\"be.net-4\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

You\u2019ll be impressed at how easy the process is when you\u2019re running BlogEngine.NET on Windows Azure Web Sites. In seconds, your new blog will be ready, deployed, and willing to record your every contemplation.<\/p>\n

\"be.net-5\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Using BlogEngine.NET<\/h2>\n

BlogEngine.NET is great, the administrative interface a breeze, and the whole experience painless when you install it this way. I\u2019ve not used the product in a number of years. Though I don\u2019t recall the installation and configuration process as a difficult one, it sure as heck wasn\u2019t this<\/strong> <\/em>easy the last time I installed it on a server. <\/p>\n

The first thing you\u2019ll want to do is to log in as admin<\/strong> (password by default is also admin<\/strong>), according to the BlogEngine.NET installation documentation<\/a>, and change your password. The administration dashboard is quite simple, and blogging using the product is a breeze. <\/p>\n

\"be.net-6\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

As simple as BlogEngine.NET is on the surface, it has a great community and huge list of extensions and resources available. The extensions page in the BlogEngine.NET administration console should give you an idea of what\u2019s available for your use if you\u2019re into the idea of customizing the functionality. <\/p>\n

\"be.net--7\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

So in seconds \u2013 it literally took me less than 1 minute on the first try \u2013 you can have a brand new blog running in Windows Azure Web Sites, for free or for however much you need whenever you need it, that\u2019s simple to use and extensible with a great plug-in model. <\/p>\n

Start Simple. Go Big When You Need To<\/h2>\n

If you haven\u2019t tried<\/a> Windows Azure yet, you can get started right now<\/a>, for free, and stay free for a year if all you really need is a BlogEngine.NET<\/a> site. In 5 minutes you\u2019ll have your own site up and running, without writing a single line of code or performing any complex configuration tasks<\/strong>. When you pair the ease of setup and deployment Windows Azure Web Sites and the application gallery provide with the blogging simplicity and elegance BlogEngine.NET<\/a> provide, you can\u2019t go wrong. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Windows Azure Web Sites team has been hard at work looking at various applications and working with vendors and community contributors to add some great applications to the web sites gallery. If you\u2019re a blogger and you\u2019d like to get started for free with a simple, yet extensible blogging tool, you might want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2046,"featured_media":58792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[7415],"class_list":["post-2114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aspnet","tag-windows-azure"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

The Windows Azure Web Sites team has been hard at work looking at various applications and working with vendors and community contributors to add some great applications to the web sites gallery. If you\u2019re a blogger and you\u2019d like to get started for free with a simple, yet extensible blogging tool, you might want to […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/dotnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/dotnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/dotnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/dotnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2046"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/dotnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/dotnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/dotnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/dotnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/dotnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/dotnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}