While it isn't ready to roll out just yet, I've decided to convert my blog and main site over to Graffiti CMS. The folks at Telligent have put together quite a platform for individual blogging and content management. Despite that, the "CMS" in the product name stands for "Content Made Simple", not "Content Management System". If you've ever used a full-blown CMS, you'll understand why.
The screenshot on the right is the dashboard for Graffiti showing post views and popular postings. (That's not my site theme)
While the product is 1.0, it is powerful as-is and shows some real potential for future versions.
Three things I found particularly interesting in Graffiti:
- The Chalk markup language
- The .NET add-in model
- Supports importing all of my Community-Server-based blog posts from my current site
The combination of these things will allow me to tightly integrate Silverlight content into my site and migrate over to the new platform without a huge hassle. The approach of using a single product will allow me to finally combine my main site and my blog under one roof.
I'm using SQL Server 2005 as the back end for my site, but Graffiti supports the cross-platform portable and x-copy deployable VistaDB product out of the box. BTW, Graffiti also works under Mono :)
Disclosure: After I had made my decision to use this product, I approached Telligent and received an upgrade from the free version for no cost due to my MVP status. There is a free version which doesn't have the same reporting, but supports just about everything else you need.
I'm looking forward to rolling this out. When it gets a little closer to release, I'll post the URL and invite you all for feedback on the new site.
For those of you accessing my site via the RSS feed, the switchover to FeedBurner means you won't have to change a thing.