Orchard is an Open Source CMS being developed by Microsoft that uses .NET MVC. It’s still not officially released but I’ve been running this blog using it since the alpha release in April. Every time a new version has come out I’ve planned to close my own blog and move the final posts over here. Version 0.5 felt really close to letting me do that, but there were a few show stoppers.

Version 0.8 has just come out and I’ve just finished upgrading to it. All the show stoppers are gone and there are some really nice new features. I wouldn’t recommend it to a client just yet. It still needs some …

This is going to be my new web site. Nogginbox.co.uk will be the new online home of Richard Garside. But, it's not quite ready yet.

This site is running on a new CMS called Orchard. Orchard uses ASP.NET MVC, a server side technology that I've been using a lot lately and have found to be very effective. Orchard is only in alpha at the moment, so it's really early days. It's Open Source and being developed by Microsoft; strange, but true.  I think it shows a lot of potential and I'm hoping to be able to use it for lots of projects when it's ready.

It's also early days for Noggin Box. …

When I started blogging I wrote my own blogging engine as a way to improve my ASP.NET skills. It was a nice project, but as other blogging engines became more advanced I didn't have time to keep up. So I've wanted to move my blog to another engine for a while. There really is no point in reinventing the wheel and I have more exciting projects now.

I heard about Oxite while I was looking into ASP.NET MVC. MVC is way of structuring applications and has been around for ages, but ASP.NET MVC is a new thing and a thing that I'm quite excited about. Oxite started life as an MVC example and isn't a …