It has always been a bit frustrating that even though I use WSS & MOSS everyday I am still using Community Server for my blog.
This has been because I wanted a themed site, not the standard SharePoint look and feel...I also wanted all the additional features like MetaBlogAPI support, meaningful URLS, and Anti Spam features for comments,
So over the past couple of weeks I have been working on some extensions to the standard WSS Blog template and it is now ready for testing. I hope to move my blog very soon, but until then I have a demonstration site available.
So what does it do?
Currently...
I have tried to add all the standard features required in a blog, not all of them are available just yet but a lot are.
Here is a list of the features...
- Full MetaBlogAPI support for posting via LiveWriter or you favourite blogging tool.
- It is an extension and so all current WSS blog functionality is still available.
- Url rewriting along the same lines as Community Server...you should be able to move your blog from CS without any of your links changing.
- Full support for Akismet anti-spam for comments, with moderation for comments classed as spam.
- Currently 10 XHTML themes available...more to come.
- Multiple categories allowed for posts.
- Ability to generate tag clouds.
- Extensible via the SharePoint API...no requirement to use a proprietary API to add functionality.
- Possible to create XHTML blogs which pass validation.
- Easily add new lists & modify the layout.
Very soon...
- CAPTCHA for comments & contact form.
- Blog Search.
- Page hit counter.
- Auto-trackback of referenced posts.
- Automatic ping to Technorati etc.
- RSS feeds for tags/categories.
- More themes.
- Blog import functionality.
Screenshots...
Can I have it?
Unfortunately not at the moment. It is very much a beta version & I would like to run my blog with it for a little while to get rid of any obvious problems. Give me a couple more weeks of late nights and it should be there!
I would however like to know what you think. if you have any question please contact me or post a comment here. If you know any good open source blog templates let me know and I will try to add them...it only takes 20-30 mins to modify an existing template to work with a WSS blog!
What about the future?
It will be available as a WSP and will appear as a feature available at the site level. The feature will add functionality to the existing blog template and so exiting WSS blogs can easily be upgraded (and restored if you don't like the feature).
As soon as I feel it is stable I will release a beta version and when v1 is ready I will probably add it to CodePlex...the codes needs to be cleaned up a bit before that will happen though.
For now...
Please visit http://demo.wssblogs.com and have a look. Try the different themes, which can be selected with the dropdown on each page.
I would appreciate any feedback (as a comment in this post or via my contact form) and would also like to know what blog features are most important to people...giving me some kind of development priority.
UPDATE: This blog is now using this functionality and it is now part of the Community Kit For SharePoint.