The wide world that is the internet may have successfully convinced you that Microsoft just released this wonderful, mystical new blogging front-end for use on ASP.NET servers (Windows hosting, for those of you who just grab shared plans and run with them rather than learning nitty gritty details). There’s a problem with this interpretation of what Oxite is, and the fault lies with those who nearly emulated a recent Saturday Night Live Short with the Oxite announcement. To be fair, part of the fault lay with the MIX Labs description of Oxite, but that has since been mostly corrected. Update: or not. MIX Online still calls it “an open source, standards compliant, and highly extensible content management platform that can run anything from blogs to big web sites.”
What is Oxite? First of all, it’s not a competitor to Wordpress, MovableType, Drupal, or any other completed blogging front end or CMS. It’s not meant to be any of those. It’s meant to be a code sample, a foundation, a building block for those looking to create something like Wordpress for their own sites. According to Jeff Sandquist of Channel 8, 9, 10, and MIX Online fame, “it is a developer sample. period.”
On the other hand, these guys didn’t just toss it up there for no reason at all. Oxite was made public in order to encourage developers to do something with it. The only example that’s online right now is the site for MIX Online, though this could change once developers begin using Oxite as a base to build their own Microsoft-centric blogging/content platforms.
Basically, if you hate Community Server (who doesn’t?) and have some spare time and ASP.NET knowledge on your hands, Oxite might be just what you need. Even if it isn’t something you’ve had in mind, it’s a perfect base for a hobby project.
If you haven’t been keeping up with the news about Oxite, you can pick up the code sample at codeplex and you can see the MIX Online implementation of Oxite live. The single biggest benefit to Oxite is that, unlike Community Server which costs tons to implement and even more to maintain, building a solution atop Oxite costs far less in the long run for business and is far more safely extensible for everyone.
AeroXperience may host a contest for developers willing to work some magic with Oxite down the road, though this depends on the level of interest.
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So it’s really just (a collection of) code samples, with which you can make content managing sites like blogs?
Very insightful article.
I had seen it was announced, but didn’t look super in-depth into it.
Hi – I couldn’t help but notice your comment about Community Server. If you have specific feedback you can direct it to me, Rob Howard rhoward@telligent.com.
Also, have you checked out Graffiti (http://graffiticms.com) it was built to be a simple, easy to maintain blog/CMS system.
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