13 features I'd like to see in BlogEngine.NET

As you probably know by now I use BlogEngine.NET as my blogging platform. I have many reasons for this, but the main reason is the fact that the code looks like if I wrote it. That's exactly how I develop applications. That include structure, coding conventions and so on. it's written in ASP.NET and it makes me easy to extend it. That's the answer to the question some of my readers wanted to know: Why you don't use WordPress? (I'm not saying WordPress is not a great engine, I just prefer BlogEngine.NET)

In order to become more powerful engine here are thirteen (more or less) common features that I'd like to see.

1. Unsubscribe from comment notifications

I got a few requests to unsubscribe readers from a specific posts manually, since they don't have an option to do it. If post reaches a large number of comments, readers who subscribed to email notifications receive a bunch of emails. I admit this can be annoying.

2. Approve/delete comment from email

It would be nice to approve/delete new comments directly from email that is automatically sent.

3. Paging comments

Another issue with large number of comments is that it gets hard to scroll down and hard to read. So adding a paging would be a good thing. You can see example on Web Designer Wall.

4. Group comments and trackbacks

Speaking of comment, it would be great thing to have comments and trackbacks separated. This could be done by adding tabs, or by simple group them so that comments are rendered first. This will enable readers to follow comments more easily.

5. Add blog name to the end of a page title

At this moment you can choose to add a blog name to the beginning of a page title, but I think that adding to the end also should be option. Search engines like that, am I right?

6. Option NOT to use websnapr for trackbacks

I am not sure you would agree with me, but I'd like to have an option not to use websnapr for trackbacks. It slows down the load time and, personally, I like to have a single image for trackbacks and comments without avatar.

7. Give me back my noavatar.jpg :-)

Like I mentioned in previous bullet I like to have a single image for trackbacks and comments without avatar. It looks less colorful that having a tens of different pictures ;)

8. We can have CommentLuv as well

CommentLuv is a funny feature that is available for WordPress users. It is a plugin that parses the feed of the comment author and displays his/hers last article inside the comment. What do you think, eh?

9. Comment form as a part of a theme

When created two BlogEngine.NET themes I wanted to change the design of comment form, but since it is not a part of a theme, I was only able to style it through CSS.

10. Archive by date

Just a simple, plain post history can be also effective.

11. Hotlinking

This is the tricky one. I found out that some blogs that refers to my articles load images from my site. I'm not saying this is the case right now, but it might significantly affect a bandwidth in the future. I know this can be set on IIS, but there must be a way to do it in code. Any ideas?

12. Pageview counter

I don't have any strong reasons for this except that this could be used to create widgets, like Popular Posts.

13. Different sidebar on main page.

This might come handy to emphasize some content on main page.

What are your thoughts on this?

If you are a BlogEngine user do you have any other suggestion? If you are not, what do you think about this at all?

I am not sure if some of this features are already planned. If yes, than hooray!

More articles in Blog archive or elsewhere

Muhammad Mosa 19 Aug 2008 #

1) Strongly agree
2) Good to have so yes. Also from website through a special page for reviewing comments for approval.
3) To be honest, this one isn't that much important to me. Paging through comments is a good to have. But how many blogs have such feature.
4) BIG YES
5) Not sure if search engines like that or not, but if yes then, why not, it is easy to be done anyway.
6) Well, I'm not voting against or to this option, not too much knowledge about it.
7) noavatar image should be there anyway.
8) Good to have.
9) I would like that too. Much flexible for theme design
10) Unless the team consider the calendar widget an archive option. I say yes to this feature. Now they are grouped by Categories only, Another option for Date would be great (Year & Month) just as the Month list option but with more details.
11) To be honest, this feature really it annoys me (D) ! if you guys decided to put it on, please make an option to disable it
12) Page view and Post view counters, with ability to ignore hits from certain IPs
13) Can we achieve this by themes and widgets?!

Al Nyveldt 19 Aug 2008 #

Hey Janko,

Interesting ideas. Some of these are already available via extensions while others are certainly doable with the current theme/widget/extension structure. Anyway, the list does point out some things BlogEngine could really use.

I was surprised to see the list missing the 2 features I've heard most about, while highlighting my personal top issue now which I've heard no one ask for yet, #9.

A few links of note:

#8: johndyer.name/.../...-BlogEngineNET-Extension.aspx

#12: www.nyveldt.com/.../...s-Extension-and-Widget.aspx (Although it needs updated for 1.4.x)

Janko 19 Aug 2008 #

Muhammad, thanks for exhaustive comment! Glad you agree with the most of it.

Al, I didn't know for these two extensions, it's exaclty what I thought. Thanks!
For the feature #9: it's just a matter of design. Leaving comment form out of themes has it's own limitations. If you style it just for yourself then you can easily do it. But if you want to build a free theme, you can't change the layout of comment form. For example, I can't move validators anywhere.

Kevin Pang 19 Aug 2008 #

Regarding feature 13, it is doable via the master page. Just define both sidebars on the master page and hide one of them depending on whether you are on the front page or not.

It's not pretty, but it works.

Andrey Shchekin 19 Aug 2008 #

From my perspective, 3 is not a good idea, the best handling of many-comment posts I have seen is the Slashdot-like -- auto-collapsed threads with notification about replies to selected thread.

As for 6, I really envied this feature immediately as I saw it.

Joel 19 Aug 2008 #

Hi Janko, your list is very practical - most of those things should be doable with extensions or some minor tweaking of the BE code.  Me, I'm hoping for a couple 'larger' features:

1) Revamped, adjustable caching system.  The singleton objects bug me a lot - great for small blogs, not so great for big sites.  I'd love to host all my sites on mosso.com but I don't think BE would play nicely on it for this reason.

2) More CMS-like page system.  OK, I know, it's a BLOG engine, not a CMS, but I really like the infrastructure that BE has (minus point #1) and I have been happy with the sites I've built on it so far.  I think I've read one post by Mads about this being in 1.4 a long time ago, but then heard nothing ever again.  I'm tempted to add it myself...

*A question: can anyone tell me where to turn off the site name in the title?  I don't see that setting anywhere??

@Al: I'd be curious to know which two features you've heard most about?

For No 12, yes there is an extension, I knew that, but what about making it core, inside the BlogEngine itself, Part of the database schema. With ability to ignore IPs and view Number Views counter. It can be enhanced more than that. Like accepting one view per IP address for every single day.
Extensions are great. And those out of the box one are also great. But somethings can become part of the Core. And then extensions can extend their usage.
Anyway, this is just my opinion.

Andrey, I'm not a big fun of comment treading view. It just my vision of a good design

Joel, although my list is more ures experience oriented, your two features fit as well. I am thinking for some time how BE could be CMS system as wel. Very basic, but still CMS. A good one, mate!
For the page title: if you updated to 1.4+ version you should see the option "Prefixes the page titles with the name of the blog" on settings page.

Muhammad, I agree with you. I guessed that some of this features are already done as widgets or extensions, but I hope at least few of them can be core. The reason for this is that many people are just not aware of widgets/extensions available (I wasn't aware of CommentersLatestPost).
Anyway, I am not sure how th current PopularPosts widget works. Where does it stores counts?

Jeremy 20 Aug 2008 #

I'm pretty new to BlogEngine.NET, so please stop me if this is available as an extension.

I'd really like to see some more image management options. It would be great to see all the images you've uploaded for a given post, or even a resource browser so you can see everything you've ever added.

I know tinyMCE offers this as an extension; but BlogEngine.NET seems to use its own system to serve images.

Janko 20 Aug 2008 #

Kevin, yes that is simple enough.

Jeremy, that's perfect - a file manager that can manage all files. Community Server has one, and it's useful tool indeed.

GTA City 22 Aug 2008 #

I was surprised to see the list missing the 2 features I've heard most about, while highlighting my personal top issue now which I've heard no one ask for yet, #9.

yeah mee too , i sorry i dont speak so much of english i'm chiliean :/

BizTron 24 Aug 2008 #

Is this really a feature? I'm trying to figure out Multi-Blog support using (at least) SQL as the repository. I'd like to be able to point a subset of domains and subdomains at each Blog, but still run as a single application. Right now, I'm running with 12 blogs on a single server, which means 12 web applications, running 12 instances of everything, and over 100 subdomains total.

I simply wanted to have a single DB, which is still required, but then maintenance for upgrades, new extensions, themes would still require serious scripting or manual labor. I've already heard from Roman Clarkson ( www.romanclarkson.us/.../...an-implementation.aspx ) on the subject. Any additional support or suggestions is greatly appreciated.

Jarrett 05 Sep 2008 #

BlogSvc http://blogsvc.net is a new blog engine that we are working on to add most of the features of BlogEngine.  We are only at version 0.4 but at the pace we are going I can see many of these features being included within a couple months.  I'm referencing this post as a sort of TODO list.

1. Unsubscribe from comment notifications
Future version.

2. Approve/delete comment from email
Future version.

3. Paging comments
Designed to support this but not yet implemented.  Planned for version 0.6.

4. Group comments and trackbacks
We are planning to put trackbacks on the side panel rather than mixed in with comments.

5. Add blog name to the end of a page title
Have not considered this feature but could be implemented in the base page.

6. Option NOT to use websnapr for trackbacks
There is no planned support for websnapr.

7. Give me back my noavatar.jpg
Built in version 0.4

8. We can have CommentLuv as well
Will look into this.

9. Comment form as a part of a theme
BlogSvc is currently looking at CSS / skin theme support using a different approach than blogengine.

10. Archive by date
In release 0.5

11. Hotlinking
Should be possible to implement module to do this.

12. Pageview counter
We are planning support for this via W3C log parsing.

13. Different sidebar on main page.
Default page, Blog page, and Post page call all have different content on the side bar.  Content can also be promoted to master page so it will show on every page.

Dan Atkinson 09 Sep 2008 #

Jarrett: That seems like a waste of bits to me. Although I appreciate that you're trying to push your code (and, by the way, this isn't the place to do that), you just spent your entire comment detailing that you have only one of these features in your implementation.

Janko: Is it possible to make an update to this post? It seems that quite a few of the 'problems' have now been addressed.

Janko 09 Sep 2008 #

Dan, I can add a note next to each issue that has been implemented.

Luisao 12 Oct 2008 #

Excelente web

David Hawes 18 Feb 2009 #

I have also thought that BlogEngine.net would make a good CMS so I tweaked it a little and have deployed it to a small (but growing) number of clients now:

blog.davehawes.com/.../...s-a-lightweight-CMS.aspx

Oh, also I would like to see features 3 , 9 and 10. Nice little wish list ;)