Build a Complete Blog Website with ASP.NET Core MVC

Introduction

Capstone #1: build ShopNest Blog end-to-end — posts, categories, tags, comments, admin CRUD, Identity, TinyMCE, SEO URLs, RSS, and Azure deploy. This ties together Articles 1–12 and 29.

After this article you will

• Scaffold Blog domain with EF Core migrations
• Admin area with Identity + CRUD
• TinyMCE + image upload for thumbnails
• SEO slug routes and paginated archive
• RSS feed and Azure App Service deploy

Prerequisites

• Article 64 — Secrets Management
• Articles 1–64 ShopNest foundations (MVC, EF Core, API, auth, deploy)

Architecture & design

Entities: Post, Category, Tag, Comment, PostTag (M:N). Areas/Admin for management. Public routes: /blog/{year}/{slug} from Article 6.

public class Post
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Title { get; set; } = "";
    public string Slug { get; set; } = "";
    public string BodyHtml { get; set; } = "";
    public DateTime PublishedAt { get; set; }
    public int CategoryId { get; set; }
    public Category Category { get; set; }
    public ICollection<Comment> Comments { get; set; } = new List<Comment>();
}

Hands-on build guide — ShopNest Full Blog with Admin Panel

1. Create ShopNest.Blog MVC project; EF migrations.
2. Scaffold Identity in Admin area.
3. PostsController CRUD + TinyMCE in Create/Edit views.
4. IFormFile thumbnail → wwwroot/uploads.
5. RssController returns application/rss+xml.
6. Paginated Index: 10 posts per page.
7. Publish to Azure App Service (Article 61).

Common pitfalls

• AllowAnonymous missing on public posts — forces login for readers.
• Html.Raw on comments without sanitization — XSS risk.

Interview & portfolio questions

Q: How SEO URLs?
A: Slug + date in route; unique index on Slug.

Summary

• Full MVC capstone integrating routing, EF, Identity
• Admin vs public separation via Areas
• RSS + pagination = portfolio-ready blog

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Next: E-Commerce Product Catalog API

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