When I picked a blog platform, I searched around trying to find one that I thought would be appropriate.  I know that blogging is pretty standard stuff, and most of the applications would probably begin to look alike at some point—at least as far as presentation and such is concerned.  Instead of one of the major platforms, I also wanted to ensure that I found a version written in .Net—something that I could spend time “under the hood”, understanding how it works, and taking a look at someone else’s programming style and intentions.  I also wanted something that would allow me to use a variety of data sources, as my hosting provider provides only a certain number of database instances in SQL Server, and I might want some options there.

In that vein, as a number of prolific bloggers maintain them, I took a look at both SubText and dasBlog, and a few other things I found around the web.  After reading some reviews and comparisons, I decided to run with BlogEngine.Net as my platform of choice. 

Things being how they are, including a busy work schedule and family with two small children, I’ve been unable to find the time to get down into the code.  This bugged me quite a bit, as what I wanted to do to get started was to change around one of the themes to fit what would be more my style.

Today, I’m happy to say that I’ve finally begun that endeavor!  My changes are small to start with, simply reorganizing an existing theme to more suit what I wanted, but what a great place to start.  I can tell that there has been quite a bit of thought put into how BlogEngine.Net works, and I’m pretty pleased with my choice!  I think I’ll probably work around trying out some other theme conversions, then start making some modifications to the code now.  I just had to make a comment about my discovery—it simply rocks!

...is entirely an example from Vertigo and pure and simple code downloaded from Codeplex.  Is that a bad thing?  I don't think so.  I'm an example / book learner, so borrowing and improving (or rather, altering to suit my needs) is typically how I become knowledgeable about new technogies, or even just new ways of doing things.  That's why this blog is on BlogEngine.Net, by the way.  I wanted to see some examples of other people's ideas.

I've used the Slide.Show application to present some simple photos on one of my sites.  So far, the only functionality I see in the project is the presentation of images in the desired format.  I keep thinking about the main data file, though, and what I could do with it as it applies to my site--perhaps create some functionality to allow me to email pictures to my site, so I don't have to manually upload them?  And some code to take the incoming email (from a template, perhaps), parse it into the picture discriptor, create a thumbnail on the fly, and update the data file?

We'll see.  That's not so much Silverlight as it is just good old ASP.Net, though.  So not too much real "learning" there.  But maybe I can use it as the jumping off point for new development.