ASP.NET Core Platforms for a Blog
Like a lot of Sitecore developers my blog (at time of writing) is hosted on Wordpress. The reason for it not being in Sitecore is simple. Sitecore is an enterprise level platform, which isn't really needed for a personal blog.
For a .net dev to have there blog on a php platform however just seems plain wrong, but again there's a logical reason. Wordpress is actually really good as a blogging platform, and it doesn't cost me anything.
Despite this I would much rather take control of my site and use it to play with all the cool features in Azure. It would also be nice to have the ability to do something about the Google PageSpeed result which is currently sitting at 24%. So in aid of this I've started looking into .net core based platforms and thought I'd share what I've found.
Miniblog.core
https://github.com/madskristensen/Miniblog.Core
As the name suggests Miniblog.core is both very small and based on .net core. Developed by Mads Kristensen its an extremely lightweight bare bones implementation, which if your after something you can help build upon is ideal. The code is straightforward to understand and very simple to adapt. Additionally if your after a 100% page speed score, then this achieves just that.
If on the other hand your after a deluxe admin experience full of functionality then this probably isn't for you.
Piranha CMS
Piranha CMS is built as a lightweight CMS platform rather than specifically as a blog, however it also contains a blog module which for me put's it at a big advantage over the other CMS platforms I've listed below.
On the back end you get a choice of SQL Server, SQLite or MySQL. The documentation isn't exactly complete, but on the day I tried it out, I found the team building it very responsive on GitHub. They even updated the documentation with one of my suggestions the very next day.
Another aspect I particularly liked about Piranha CMS was it's block editor, which from the brief look I've had so far reminds me of the block editor Umbraco has. Whereas other platforms in this list were restricted to a large rich text field.
Orchard Core
https://github.com/OrchardCMS/OrchardCore
Orchard Core is the dot net core version of the Orchard CMS. It's currently in beta, but I'm not sure that put's it at much of a disadvantage over the others on this list.
My initial impressions of Orchard Core however weren't as high as Piranha CMS. The admin interface wasn't quite as nice and as far as I could tell, it didn't have anything like Piranha's block editor. The solution itself also seemed far more complex and I wasn't certain what I got for this. I expect Orchard Core is likely better in some ways that I have yet to discover, but for my needs as a blog this is probably not the case. It also didn't have a blog module out of the box.
Squidex
I have't had much of a chance to play with Squidex yet, but it does offer an interesting difference to the others mentioned so far.
For a start Squidex is an entirely headless cms, and is built around the concept of CQRS and Event Sourcing. Unlike the others it also uses MongoDB rather than a SQL based database.
Where MongoDB is concerned, I often get the impression people are using it because as developers we tend to have a preference to using something new rather than something adequate. However when it comes to Azure pricing, there is potentially a saving to be made by using Mongo rather than Azure SQL.