Starting a new Site - Should I "Use a Template" or "Write from Scratch"

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Starting a new Site - Should I "Use a Template" or "Write from Scratch"

I have been thinking of starting a site of my own for long time. I am good at all concepts of C#/ASP.NET and all DB stuff. I have created and can create a site from scratch for myself. But the effort/time involved in creating a site from scratch is little discouraging, where next thing (and more important thing) I need to worry about is the content on the site.

I have seen many sites and blogs (few links below).

I need to know, what is the general approach while creating a similar site? Are there any general tips i need to be aware of before starting one?

http://naspinski.net

http://codeclimber.net.nz

+1 A:

If you're talking about a blog site, there's no need to reinvent the wheel unless you just want to. There are plenty of capable blog engines in any language of your choice. Go with one and extend it if necessary.

Chris 2009-10-29 15:06:27

Yes. I may write blog. I already have one site with Blogger. But I want my own site so that I may extend it the way I want. There are limitation on how much you can extend on these sites, and I may not be using my site just for blogging in future. Add more features, probably list my ads, etc.

noob.spt 2009-10-29 15:15:08

I'd recommend giving BlogEngine.NET a look. I don't agree with some of their coding style, but the existing code base is quite extensible. It should serve well as a starting platform, and I'm pretty sure it works fine in medium trust, which means you can host it yourself or get a cheap web host to do it for you.

Chris 2009-10-29 16:08:38

Thanks Chris, I checked their site and it looks really good. They have lot of themes available and everything looks customizable. I have to look into their code though.

noob.spt 2009-10-29 16:23:10

noob2487: Wanting to extend it in a specific and unsupported way, eh? IMHO, this is one of the best reasons to roll your own. Huge fan. Pls post results.

tsilb 2009-11-13 03:46:06

+3 A:

Do you mean stating you own Blog?

you can open blog on some free service as Blogger and see how it goes.

Later you can buy you own domain name and hosting, install existing Blog engine there(even open source if you want to tweak it) and continue from there.

after comment clarification: Buy a domain name, buy disk space and traffic from hosting company. Install ant cms(content managment system)/blog/forum/anything else you wan ton the host. Develop only the parts you can't find in existing cms/blog systems. No need to develop everything from scratch. With saved time you can take any open-source blog/cms engine and help them with patches.

Alex Reitbort 2009-10-29 15:08:15

Yes. I may write blog. I already have one site with Blogger. But I want my own site so that I may extend it the way I want. Add more features, probably list my ads, etc.

noob.spt 2009-10-29 15:13:42

+1 A:

Building your own blog engine is fast and easy. Building a good one is slow and hard. I've written many iterations of my blog - currently version 6 using ASP.NET and C#, and working on the design for version 7.

As to whether it's worth it, that's really your call. Do you code in your free time? Enjoy it? Are you willing to go through the whole lifecycle?

You will be responsible for:

Analysis & Design
Development
Testing
Deployment
Prod support

It's worth it to me. Is it worth it to you?

tsilb 2009-10-29 15:10:18

Thanks. I do enjoy coding in free time, but I really don't want to reinvent wheel (as Chris suggested). I want some basic layout so that I can extend it to the way I want. But are most of these websites are done from scratch as you have been doing? Is only other alternative is blogger site?

noob.spt 2009-10-29 15:20:21

+2 A:

Consider some open source C#/asp.net blogging platforms:

tsilb 2009-10-29 16:06:56

Thanks. I guess these should be good enough for me to start.

noob.spt 2009-10-29 16:20:47

I have one question though, how can I get formatting for the code that I post on any of the site I create?

noob.spt 2009-10-29 16:21:38

Steve Wortham 2009-11-05 23:53:06

@noob2487 - You can create your own template in BlogEngine. But if you want absolute full control of the generated HTML, I'd look at Oxite.

Steve Wortham 2009-11-05 23:55:52

+1 A:

It really depends how much time you're willing to spend on it and what kind of site.If you want a blog site,there are a lot of free blog engine out there that you can use and takes a little time to make it live.My number one recommendation is blogengine.net...very flexible,a lot of choices for theme,and easy to set up.However, if you're like me that is willing to spend a lot of time building it then go for it.I started building my site....a social networking site(http://www.joecaps.com) December 2008 and until now I'm still building it.

joe capi 2009-10-29 16:16:24

ansaurus

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Starting a new Site - Should I "Use a Template" or "Write from Scratch"

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