Scott (Telligent), where is our blogging relationship going?

Back in the days when this blog site was "dotnetweblogs.com" it was exciting and fun because it was new and ever-changing.   Like watching your niece or nephew growing up, it was fun to see the improvements and changes that Scott introduced to the site each month (sometimes each week or day).  Not that blogs were new, but I was new to blogs, this was a new blog engine, and it was written in .NET and dedicated to .NET which made it uber-cool. 

Since then, the blog site moved to http://weblogs.asp.net, Telligent took over operations of http://www.asp.net, and finally they hired Scott and absorbed/wrangled the .TEXT codebase into their new CommunityServer project.  (this is my recollection anyways)

Since then, things have definitely changed for us non-MSDN bloggers hosted on the ASP.NET site.  The .TEXT site and blogs have been static since the .TEXT .95 beta.  The MSDN bloggers have seen upgrades to the new CommunityServer codebase, new skins, and other changes.  That is great for the Microsoft employees, but for me the old blog has definitely lost its luster.  Attempts to spackel the holes and put on a fresh coat of paint via CSS have mostly been a trial in frustration.  I think I'm ready for an upgrade to my blogging experience.

Maybe its time for me to self-host so I can use Community Server, or simply move to another blog site such as dotnetjunkies.com ...

I guess my question for Scott and Telligent is; "where is our blogging relationship going?"

10 Comments

  • I've been wondering the same thing for quite some time. :(

  • Same here.



    I've even tried to contact Scott to ask him what solutions we have if we need to migrate the content of our weblog to a new one, but either he did not reply or simply the e-mail never arrived. Does someone even know how to contact him? Last time I tried, the Contact page on his blog did not redirect to a valid e-mail address...



    The big question is: who is in charge of this place now?

  • I talked to Rob Howard about this when he spoke at our .NET user group meeting on Tuesday. He said they're planning to upgrade weblogs.asp.net to CommunityServer 2.0 after it releases, which would put the upgrade around January 2006. I'm happy with that - I just want to know it's in the works - but I wish they'd announce it before everyone gets tired and moves off to their own sites.

  • Totally agree. Keep seeing different community server skins everywhere apart from at weblogs.asp.net. I'd say it's time for some upgrade...

  • It is our intention to upgrade the weblogs.asp.net blogs to Community Server 2.0 once we ship (which should be in December).



    The full answer is that weblogs.asp.net is very low in priority. Why? Lots of reasons but it mostly boils down to resources (people and software/hardware).



    I'm not making excuses but will give you an idea of why the site has not been upgraded. Telligent manages the asp.net site and you'll notice that on asp.net we advertise. We advertise to subsidize the cost of having development resources (used to build the next www.asp.net on ASP.NET 2.0 and upgrade the forums to Community Server among other things). Both the forums and www.asp.net run ads....weblogs.asp.net does not. Right now, weblogs.asp.net does nothing but cost money to operate (which we're happy to contine to support of course). It's not cheap either as weblogs.asp.net draws about the same amount of traffic as the whole of www.asp.net (so there are both bandwidth and server resources being used). These are not reasons in and of themselves for the upgrade to not take place but they are the reason that it has had such a low priority.



    There aren't any resources we can provide to migrate the posts to another blog. That's definitely unfortunate but it is true. Ironically, I believe it will be easier to migrate after we upgrade to CS 2.0.

  • Alex: I can only think of one thing: isn't www.asp.net a Microsoft site? And if so, why is telligent responsible/paying for the bandwidth?



    I mean: www.asp.net is still owned by Microsoft.



    I find it a bit strange that Microsoft can't spend any resources on keeping one of their major .NET sites in the air. I mean: if weblogs.asp.net or www.asp.net is down due to lack of resources, it's a major blow for Microsoft, so it's important for THEM to keep the site up and running as well.



    The current blog engine here at weblogs.asp.net has some bugs which are pretty annoying and it would be great if some upgrade for the blog engine would be installed. Here I read, december, january.. that's ok, as long as someone is going to do SOMETHING about it.



    And for Telligent and Microsoft it would be really useful if they clearly state who's in charge of all this, who we can contact when something fails etc.



    It's now a blur who controls what. For example, it's a real surprise to me to read here that Telligent controls www.asp.net, as it's a Microsoft site (at least it was).

  • One correction. I should have said "Jason Mauss' blog" not Paschal's blog...Paschal was just one of the commentors on Jason's blog entry.


  • Microsoft should be paying Telligent to manage *.asp.net instead of Telligent having to rely on ad revenue.



    I don't get it.



    Blogs, currently, are *the* most important way for Microsoft to communicate with its users. Microsoft needs to realize this.

  • ...and its not like Microsoft makes billions of dollars every year... I think the hosting bill and a minimum monthly budget won't break their bank.

  • Is this serious? We ask for support and updates on the software of a site and get directed to a *personal* forum (call me alex?!) to complain?



    Is this the way a company doing business with Microsoft and taking care of one of its biggest community domains (it's not about weblogs only, *everything* in *.asp.net is the same thing for all practical purposes) addresses users' concerns? Unbelievable... I'm already working on a console app to migrate out of this mess.



    Either Microsoft is not paying enough to Telligent and it's *their* call and decision that the weblogs have low priority, or Telligest is not satisfying the expectations Microsoft and all of us have. I find it extremely hard to believe it's the former. And someone at Microsoft should be taking this matter seriously...

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