What is aspBlast CMS
By Nelson Pires
Updated on
So what is aspBlast CMS? It's another CMS but not just any other CMS. This one is different and 100% written by myself. I'm some distance way from having a marketable product, but so far I was able to develop a system that incorporates functionality not easily found even on top tier systems. Development is continuing and this website runs on a beta version of it.
Why another CMS? Well, because I can, that's the short answer and because it was very much needed. I have tried a myriad of systems over the past 20+ years and none ticked all the boxes. Those that fulfilled all the functionality requirements failed in the price section, either too expensive, convoluted SaS model or had a weird mix of technologies I did not master, so updating/changing it was not straight forward.
Back in 2003 I was producing a lot of websites and I desperately needed a simple and small system that was kind on server resources but also produced a small and clean HTML output. Found none. So, the idea came to me to develop one such system. It started minimalist and evolved over time to be the system it is today.
In the beginning, I was heavily involved with the Classic ASP development scene (after leaving PHP behind) and hence the name. It was also around the time when PHPNuke was popular. So I called my system ASPBLast. It is now totally written in ASP.NET C# with a MSSQL back-end and re-branded "aspBlast". The coming APIs will be powered by NodeJS.
aspBlast is fresh, new and unique in many ways, it's also 100% themeable. It spits out clean, concise and semantic HTML and it's very fast. The administration web supports managing multiple sites from one installation which is another bonus.
It was envisioned from inception that aspBlast CMS be a mixture of content and publishing management system, with a very strong focus on authoring. I'm not there yet but I'm well on the way and the goal is still the same.
I plan to release the system when I think it's ready and the distribution model is still to be worked out.
As usual, fell free to comment, suggest or criticise, all welcome.