Integrating my website with BlogEngine.Net

Question

I am developing a site (ASP.Net based) that, besides other features enables the users to blog as well. I am thinking of integrating BlogEngine.Net to my portal.

From whatever little I have analyzed, integrating at presentation layer will be far more challenging in comparison to doing so at business layer. That means (I guess) I will have to use the BlogEngine.Core.dll in my application.

I am looking for some sort of approval from the community, complimented with suggested do's and dont's. BTW, I find the business layer a bit intimidating (complex) as I want some basic & necessary features only.

Answer 1

you can check out http://www.ajaymatharu.com/integrating-blogengine-into-an-existing-site/

Answer 2

I recently did this for a client - note how I styled the blog to fit the main site design:

http://www.homenetdirect.com/

This was an ASP.NET 3.5 Web Application Project with master pages. I took one of the basic themes from BlogEngine that resembled what I was trying to get lookwise. Then I had all the elements that needed to be styled. Do the CSS gradually starting from the main container and work your way in (use Firefox dev toolbar). One more thing: I had to set up a subdomain for the blog - contrary to what a lot of people say, this will not hurt your SEO. SEO starts and ends with good content.

EDIT:

Creating themes for BlogEngine (Al Nyveldt's tutorials are worth watching):

http://www.nyveldt.com/blog/post/BlogEngineNET-Creating-Themes-Webcast.aspx