After months of looking at blog applications, I have decided on BlogEngine.NET. This decision is based on many things, but mainly for 2 reasons.
1. Open Source .NET project.
2. The data can be stored in XML. No database is required and there is the opportunity for it to switch over later if your blog becomes too large for XML.
Other reasons were considered. Other blog features are missing, but I do not use them and they will be added later anyway. The developer has a reputation for having very clean code and is dedicated to keeping the code concise and clean. The code also adheres to some best practices methods you would not normally see in .NET projects which is also promising.
Setup
BlogEngine.NET could not have been any easier to set up. I literally had it running in less than 5 minutes. Of course, I am a .NET junkie and have an advantage, so the layman could be up in less than 1 hour at worse case scenario.
BlogEngine.NET
You can find BlogEngine.NET on the official website. Here you'll find tutorials, documentation, tips and tricks and much more. The ongoing development of BlogEngine.NET can be followed at CodePlex where the daily builds will be published for anyone to download.