After using BlogEngine.net as my blogging tool, I decided to switch back to my old tool: WordPress, also decided to share my experience hoping it will help someone. The main reason that I switched to BlogEngine.Net from WordPress was that I changed my hosting platform to Windows and WordPress is optimized to run on Linux platform. It turned out that, although WP works better on Linux than on Windows, it still works great on Windows platform.
I will not spend much time comparing WP to BE here, but will just point out several things which made me decide to abandon BE:
1. Password Retrieval
If you forget your password, all you need is to enter your email address, then your old password will be reset and a new password will be sent to you. The 2-step password retrieval is a standard way to reset user’s password, and I was surprised to find out that BE’s implementation of the password retrieval. If someone knows my email, then he/she can keep resetting my password and then I will not be able to log in correctly. There is a option in BE to disable password reset, but if it is turned on, then you will not be able to reset your password if you forget your password. I raised this concern in BE’s discussion area on CodePlex in January 2014 (https://blogengine.codeplex.com/discussions/501450), then after almost one month later, one of BE’s coordinator confirmed it is a legitimate concern, but it does not have high priority. I have been thinking of leaving BE since then, because if a software system does not think a security concern has high priority, then it is not a good software system. Period.
2. Automatic Updating
This is another show stopper for BE. In WP, whenever a new version is released, a notification will show up in the admin dashboard, and the admin can update WP with one click. However, in BE, you will have to do upgrade one version at a time, and also you must follow specific instructions to upgrade to the new version. So with WP, you don’t need to know programming to upgrade the system, but with BE, you must at least be techie enough to be able to upgrade the system.
3. Themes and Pluggins
There are not many themes or pluggins to choose from for BE. I used BE for about four months, but didn’t see updates on either themes or pluggins. While in WP, you have rich collection of themes and pluggins to choose from.
4. Post Draft
In BE, unpublished post (post draft) will show up on homepage if you are logged in as admin. This threw me off guard several times because I thought I have published some unfinished posts.
5. Development and Support
There are a handful developers involved in BE development, while there are a lot more developers involved in WP development. Also, WP has a much bigger community than BE, so you can get better support from WP community.
To be honest, there are some nice features in BE that are missing in WP, for example, you can add Google Analytics code or any other JavaScript code in the admin dashboard, without having to modify the source code, or installing any pluggin, but they are nice-to-have features. While the points listed above, especially the first three, are the features BE needs to improve, and it is them that made me break up with BE and switch back to WP.
