Quick start blog based on Orchard (in pictures)

Orchard is an open source blogging engine developed by CodePlex.org with the support of Microsoft. Orchard is based on ASP.NET MVC 2 and currently uses .NET 3.5.



Orchard is developing rapidly and today supports the following functions:

• establishment of several blogs
• multiplayer mode
• creating additional pages
• admin with editing main functions
• Topics
• XML-RPC support, posting to blogs via Live Writer or other software

In this post I will tell you how to deploy a blog based on Orchard with the most minimal effort. It will help us in this Web Platform Installer .

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To successfully install Orchard, you need to have an IIS server (IIS 7.5 is described in the article) and the .NET Framework 3.5 installed, plus we will use the Web Platform Installer 2.0, which is integrated into the IIS administration panel, to simplify installation.

Install Orchard

Run the IIS manager, run the Web Platform Installer.







Go to the WPI options using the hyperlink below.







In the window, add the value http://www.orchardproject.net/privatedrops/orchardfeed.xml to the field next to the Add Feed button. Click Add feed. This will add a new channel to install the latest Orchard build via WPI.







Click OK. You will receive a new tab of the main WPI window for installing Orchard.







Click on the “Click to include ...” link to include the required components that may not be installed on your computer, but which are required to run Orchard. This will allow WPI to automatically install and configure all the necessary components.

Click the Install button. In the window, click I Accept confirming your desire to install the selected components.







After downloading and installing the components, configure the required hosting parameters.







This will install Orchard in IIS. Then you will receive a message about the successful installation.











Follow the link and make sure that Orchard is installed on your server. It's all! It remains to adjust the parameters of the blog and can work.







Orchard is being intensively developed. Already, this engine offers enough functionality to run your blog. Install, try. Good luck!

Live writer

In addition to the article, I will explain how to use Live Writer to publish articles to Orchard blogs.

For those who do not know: Live Writer allows you to publish articles to many places on the Internet from one place. I personally publish articles in LiveJournal, GotDotNet, Spaces and on my Orchard-based blog.

In order to start publishing articles to the Orchard-based blog, create it in the admin area.







After creation, you can set the parameters of the new blog in Live Writer as follows:







Where the web address of the blog is the URL of the blog you just created. Click “Next” and the rest of the configuration will be done by Live Writer.



That's all.



Enjoy your blogging, colleagues! :-)