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Oxite - Microsoft's answer to Wordpress

As the year 2009 draws to a close, let us take a look back at a product which Microsoft launched ealier this year as its answer to Wordpress - Oxite.


Oxite is an is an "open source, standards compliant, and extensible content management sample that can run anything from blogs to big web sites." This is how Microsoft describes it. (To see Oxite in action, click here)

Oxite provides you with a strong foundation you can build upon - pingbacks, trackbacks, anonymous or authenticated commenting (with optional moderation), gravatar support, RSS feeds at any page level, support for MetaWebLog API (think Windows Live Writer integration made easy), web admin panel, support for Open Search format allowing users to search your site using their browser's search box, and more - so, you can spend time on designing a great experience.
Oxite is a blog engine based on ASP.NET MVC. So this is basically for developers who know a little bit of .NET framework. One of the biggest argument that I have heard against Oxite is that most web hosting providers have a Linux box which comes pre-loaded with Apache/MySQL/PHP, all free. Many (like www.godaddy.com) provide a complete Wordpress-integrated hosting service. So why should anyone go for Oxite which needs Microsoft software which are not free? This is a myth which I want to break here.

To deploy Oxite, you need a server which supports ASP.NET. If you do a quick search, you will find many providers who provide these services for the same price of a Linux box. Plus if you need Visual Studio, there is a free Express Edition available. If you have ever worked with Visual Studio, you will appreciate its power and ease of use over other rival tools.

Oxite is still not a finished product. It has no install, it has no documentation. If you are a tech enthusiast and like to play around with code, this is for you.

I have put together some links for ready reference -

1. Oxite - Download and Support
2. List of sites running on Oxite
3. Skins available for Oxite
4. Know more about Oxite

Let me know about your experience of using Oxite.
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