One of the OSS projects I started but have done little with is a blog engine. I thought I would just use FluentMigrator and FluentNHibernate to build and wire up the data model, and then be on the fast track to a very simple blog engine. My excuse is that I have limited time, and that’s true, but in part I haven’t wanted to build on top of a RDBMS – in this case probably MS SQL.
This blog is currently powered by BlogEngine.Net which is a fine blog engine, but I have one big dislike. Blending is seamlessly into the rest of the site has been less than joyful. I don’t care for its approach to theme-ing, and would much prefer something I can drop into whatever view engine I choose. Currently and for the foreseeable future, computeristsolutions.com is powered by Castle Monorail. I want something that I can just pop in and add the necessary views. BE.Net is not that. I do like that it by default uses file-based storage. That makes switching hosting providers and backing up fairly easy.
So I’m thinking of attempting to use RavenDB; @ayende says it will support an in-process mode (aka embedded). It uses a document storage approach, and persists to files. There’s no mapping, just ‘magic’ to persist and fetch object data. Sounds perfect for a blog engine among other things.
I’ll have to grab the source, build, and give it a whirl. Love to hear feedback & opinions on this.