Blogifier is a self-hosted, MIT-licensed publishing platform written in ASP.NET and Blazor WebAssembly, aimed at developers and small teams who want to run a lightweight personal or group blog on their own infrastructure.

What it is

Blogifier is an open-source content management system and blogging engine implemented in C# on ASP.NET, with a Blazor WebAssembly front end. It ships as a web application that can be published from source or started from a container, and it stores its working data in an app_data directory alongside the application. The project's stated goal is a blog system implemented entirely with .NET technology, described by its maintainers as faster, simpler, and smaller than the alternatives they were working with.

The concrete problem it solves is the cost and weight of running a general-purpose CMS when all that is needed is a personal or group blog. Rather than deploying a PHP stack and its plugin ecosystem, a self-hoster works within the .NET toolchain they already use. Blogifier replaces the familiar heavyweight blog installation with a single .NET application that can be dropped into a dist folder, copied to a host, and started, which suits developers who want the whole surface of their blog to be code they can read and modify in C#.

Key capabilities

• Self-hosted blog and CMS built on ASP.NET with Blazor WebAssembly, written in C#.
• Container deployment through docker-compose up -d, serving the site on localhost:8080.
• Native publishing scripts: publish.cmd on Windows and publish.sh on Linux produce a dist output folder.
• Standalone published output, including a Blogifier.exe binary on Windows, that can be copied and run anywhere.
• Built-in admin area with first-run registration at /admin/register/ and login at /admin/login/.
• Development workflow from source with dotnet run inside src/Blogifier/, serving on localhost:5000.
• Runs on .NET 7.0 SDK for source builds, with .NET Core Runtime 7.0 required for pre-3.0 compiled releases.
• MIT licence for code, Creative Commons for documentation.

Who uses it and how

• Developers who want a personal blog whose entire stack is .NET and whose source they can fork and extend.
• Small groups needing a shared group blog rather than a single-author site.
• Docker users deploying to a Linux host, typically starting the stack with docker-compose up -d and reaching it on port 8080.
• Teams already invested in ASP.NET who prefer to keep a .NET Core Runtime 7.0 host rather than add a PHP runtime.
• Contributors building from source, since the current version is not released and the maintainers describe the project as most suitable for developers to build and use themselves.

Getting started

The quickest path from source is to install Docker and Docker Compose, run docker-compose up -d in the project root, and open localhost:8080. A native build instead requires the .NET 7.0 SDK plus Node.js 14 or above, then ./publish.cmd on Windows or sh ./publish.sh on Linux, after which the dist folder can be copied and run.

How it compares

The README names WordPress as the more suitable choice for users who want a complete feature set and easy configuration, and is candid that Blogifier still lacks many functions by comparison. Blogifier's difference is the stack rather than the feature list: it is an ASP.NET and Blazor application for people who want their blog written in .NET and hosted on their own terms.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster operates the whole runtime: .NET 7.0 or the container stack, plus the app_data directory the application writes to, and a startup error is expected on first run because that directory does not exist in the release output. The maintainers state plainly that the latest version has not been released, that the project is not perfect, and that it suits developers building it themselves; anyone wanting a polished, release-tracked CMS should use WordPress or wait. Building has been verified on Windows and Linux, but macOS is explicitly untested.

$ cd /your-local-path/Blogifier/src/Blogifier/
$ dotnet run