I decided to start experimenting with Blogengine.net, an open-source ASP.NET blogging platform.  Installation was brainless.  Basically, unzip the zip file which you download from here into a directory.  You have the option of downloading just the web site or you may download the entire source. I opted for the web site this time.  You'll need to add a virtual directory under IIS. Make sure it is configured for ASP.NET 2.0. The installation instructions are very good. Follow them and you'll be fine.  Literally, it took me less then 10 minutes to get this site going.

After installation I could run the site flawlessly - quite impressive.  First thing was to change the theme as I wasn't too happy with the default.  This was another simple task. Simply login with the username/password, admin/admin. You'll get an extra set of links for maintaining the blog.  I took care of two things right off, I changed the theme and added my own account.  One of the features of Blogengine.net is the ability to have multiple user accounts. 

I logged off and that was it. I had a blog. The next thing I wanted to do was to get it setup with Windows Live Writer (WLW).  This part didn't go so flawlessly. 

I followed the typically procedure of adding a new Weblog account.  I specified that this was another web log service (not one of the defaults in WLW).  The next page asks for the blog's URL and username/password, I entered those and pressed next.  The next dialog (see figure) surprised me because it asked for a provider type.  I was under the impression that WLW would detect all that information.  Further research indicates that this is not necessarily so.  After several attempts, I could not get WLW to detect my blog.  Fortunately, this can be done using the Metawebblog API (one of the items in the drop down). You'll need to enter the path to the api which is in the format:

http://thedomain/metaweblog.axd

so mine was http://camaro/blogengine/metaweblog.axd

After entering that information, WLW detected my blog and from what I can tell, functions properly. I'll continue to experiment with Blogengine.net and will report my findings. I'm going to be looking into adding additional pages (non blog pages) which is a feature I've been wanting in dasBlog but is not there.