Yes, it’s another meta-blogging post (see Jeff Atwood post on meta-blogging). But I think it’s a relevant one. I finally made the big move and decided to use an hosting provider to host my blog. And more importantly, I switched from WordPress to BlogEngine.Net.

How I made the choice to go with BlogEngine.NET?

Back in July, I decided to create my own blog engine. So I began the development with exactly what I had in mind for the most fantastical blog ever. After a week and really slow progress (I was sure to finish development by the beginning of August, 1 month later), I decided to look at other blog engines to gather idea on architecture and what is needed to be implemented. I looked at Oxite and BlogEngine.NET (since they are in .NET). I had a big surprise. I haven’t realized coding your own blog was so much work. In fact, BlogEngine.NET was already doing everything that I wanted (except for extension-less url). 

And the ability to write your own theme is so easy! The BlogEngine.NET really did done a good job.

How was the migration?

Horrific. WordPress use a proprietary format and can’t be imported directly into BlogEngine.NET. But it was no big deal since I wanted to reread all post and correct spelling and bad grammar, I decided to recreate them all. I used the WordPress statistics to know which post were the most read and done them first.

Uploading to GoDaddy.

I’m not an expert in hosting server. I guess the experience was relatively easy, if it wasn’t for the fact that I abandoned after 2 hours and when getting back, everything was working as expected. The important thing is that it worked and it’s fast.

My apologies to Wordpress.

I have nothing against you, really. You are a great service and a wonderful blogging platform. For 2 years you made blogging a unique experience. But my world is in .NET and you are not written in it. But again, thank you!