After an extended time offline, I finally have this new blog and personal web site. If you want to know what I have been up to professionally, check my LinkedIn page. I'll be describing my ongoing activities this new blog.

In part because I've recently been doing most of my Web dev using MVC, I decided to use Orchard as the CMS for my new site and blog. A key reason why I selected Orchard is because it supports SQL Server Compact 4.0. I find having a file-based db makes initial dev and deploy easier, particularly when the db is still actively being modified as part of developing the site. So far, I’m very pleased with how SQL Server Compact 40 works with MVC and how easy it is to deploy (not having to pay my site hoster for more db instances and space every time I prototype a new site/service is great).

As far as Orchard, I have mixed feelings after a first pass through the code base as part of building/deploying this site. I think Orchard has a lot of potential, but it’s still a very early product and is still missing a lot needed functionality. For example, simple things like displaying Permalinks and Trackback on blog posts is not yet included. Adding permalinks is easy enough, but adding trackback would require developing a module. I like how modular Orchard is, which make it very flexible from a dev standpoint, but the downside is the framework is fairly complex and requires significant ramp up time (it’s not as simple using standard MVC programming to extend functionality). Personally, I really like MVC and I often got frustrated that I could not use standard MVC in Orchard and instead had to conform to the variation of MVC required for the Orchard framework. It'll be interesting to see how Orchard evolves as a product. I'll be blogging more about why I decided to use Orchard as well as my experiences using/developing Orchard as I build out my site.