.blog

.blog is a new, open source, simple single blog platform, built with Blazor Server.

.blog is designed to be simple, flexible and extensible.

Built against .NET 8.0 LTS Blazor.

Features

• East to configure, quick to get up and running.
• Social-media-friendly out of the box, with sharing functionality and appropriate dynamic meta tag creation.
• Automatic featuring and display of recent posts.
• GDPR built in.
• Easily extensible.
• SEO-friendly, meta tags and automatic sitemap creation.
• Mobile-friendly responsive design.

License

• .blog is licensed under the MIT License

Getting started

1. Ok, lets get this show on the road! First, clone the repository and make sure to open the solution file in Visual Studio.
   🟩 NOTE 🟩
   If you clone a project in Visual Studio with a solution file in it, Visual Studio will not automatically open the solution file, so you must open the file yourself.

git clone https://github.com/sedgey/BlazorBlog.git

2. Create an empty sql server/sql express database in a location of your choosing and note the connection string.
3. Add an appsettings.json file to the BlazorBlog project with the following content,
   🟥 IMPORTANT 🟥
   Replace all entries surrounded with #### with your own values.

{
  "DetailedErrors": true, // turns on CircuitOptions.DetailedErrors
  "Logging": {
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Information",
      "Microsoft": "Warning",
      "Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime": "Information",
      "Microsoft.AspNetCore.SignalR": "Debug" // turns on SignalR debugging
    }
  },
  "AllowedHosts": "*",
  "ConnectionStrings": {
    "default": "####Your Database Connection String####" // e.g. Data Source=YourComputer\\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=True;Database=BlazorBlog;Trust Server Certificate=true;
  }
}

4. Next we are going to scaffold the database so open the package manager console and cd into the blog project folder:

cd Blazor.Blog

Then run the following command to generate an entity framework migration:

dotnet ef migrations add InitialCreate

And finally update your database.

dotnet ef database update

5. Additionally you can brand the blog by replacing the following files located in the BlazorBlog wwwroot/images folder:
   • logo.png (960px X 150px)
   • logosmall.png (630px X 100px)
6. Uncomment the following line in program.cs (line 16).

options.Conventions.AllowAnonymousToAreaPage("Account", "/Create");

7. Build & run the project.

Set Up

If everything went well then the project is up and running, so you need to create a user login:

1. Navigate to /account/create and create a user login (the route you allowed by uncommenting the line in the program.cs file)
   🟥 VERY IMPORTANT 🟥
   It is ESSENTIAL that you comment out or delete (recommended) this line in your program.cs as soon as possible to prevent the creation of any new user logins.
   🟩 NOTE 🟩
   You can have multiple logins and multiple authors, but since it is a single blog, any user is able to create/edit/archive(delete)/draft any post, create/edit/delete categories and create/edit authors. Authors are NOT linked to logins.

2. Now you can edit the existing Post/Category/Author or create and post your own categories/authors/blog posts etc. Enjoy!