Microsoft debuts early test version of Oxite open source blogging engine
WordPress has more competition to be. Microsoft's Codeplex team has developed an open source blogging engine that can support simple blogs and large web sites such as its own MIX Online.
The project, revealed by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley on Monday, offers content management features that will extend its use beyond the simple blogsphere, Microsoft claimed.
"Oxite was developed carefully and painstakingly to be a great blogging platform, or a starting point for your own web site project with CMS needs," according to Microsoft.com.
Oxite, for example, offers support for "pingbacks, trackbacks, anonymous or authenticated commenting, gravatar support, RSS feeds at any page level, support for MetaWebLog API, a web admininstration panel and support for Open Search format allowing users to search your site using their browser's search box, Microsoft pointed out.
It's an apha release and available under the OSI-aproved Microsoft Public License. Oxite, which was made available on December 5, is a provider-based architecture that allows users to "swap out database and search providers," Microsoft said, adding that SQL Server Database and local and Live search providers are included.
Oxite offers support for multiple blogs per site.
"Oxite includes the ability to create and edit an arbitrary set of pages on your site. Want an 'about' page? You got it. Need a special page about your dogs, with sub-pages for each of those special animals? Yep, no worries," Microsoft continues. "The ability to add pages as a child of another page is all built in. The web-based editing and creation interface lets you put whatever HTML you want onto your pages, and the built-in authentication system means that only you will be able to edit them. And if that's not enough, well, you have all the code, don't you?"
A developer on the project said the .NET blogging tool will see the light of day once the "kinks" are worked out.
" In addition to on10.net and Channel 9, the team has also built a smaller single-person blog engine that we have currently deployed to our personal sites (see duncanmackenzie.net as an example). Once we have worked out the kinks in this code base, code-named "Oxite," we'll be shipping that code out (in C# and the .NET Framework 2.0)," wrote Duncan Mackenzie, a developer on the project.