How to start a new ASP.NET MVC site? - asp.net

I'm a experienced .NET developer, but I havent done much webdevelopment and particularly not a new site from scratch.
Now am I thinking of building a site for one of my hobbies. I realize that much of the functionality I need has already been bulit and hopefully released as opensource. My wish is to find a skelletton for my site with the basic functionality to bulid upon. That will leave the specific and fun parts to me....
I wishlist:
- One logon for the site.
- User profiles.
- Possibility for users to contribute with articles, pictures, links etc.
- Leave comments for articles.
- Generate feeds.
- Build the site using ASP.NET MVC
Can anyone point me in the right direction? Where do I start?

I hesitated writing this answer because it might come across as flippent or deliberately unhelpful.
However, I cannot recommend highly enough the tutorials and examples on the MVC site; especially the NerdDinner example app and walkthrough (not sure if it's been updated for MVC2 though).

As developer for developers ;) check this http://kigg.codeplex.com/ I think it's exactly what you need. Live sample here dotnetshoutout.com
Enjoy :)

Hi Malcolm what you need has been implemented many times. If you need to start from scratch for the learning experience I would recommend the ASP.Net MVC Membership Starter Kit (http://mvcmembership.codeplex.com/) it would handle user accounts and profiles for you (read up on ASP.Net membership if you are unfamiliar with it).
If you don't need to start from scratch I would recommend looking at a CMS or blogging system depending on your specific requirements as there is no point in reinventing the wheel unless you really have to or want to learn.
Edit
Have a look here:
http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/Categories.aspx?category=Blogs
and
http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/Categories.aspx?category=ContentMgmt&appid=BlogEngineNET
I am not up to date with MVC blog engines but I know there isn't too many CMS's around that would compete with more mature ASP.Net alternatives.
I hope this is helpful.
Thanks,
B

check out http://www.orchardproject.net/. But you may find some liter alternatives for your specific needs. Or you can possibly combine a couple of codeplex projects to get to where you want to be.

As stated above I would recommend going through the nerd dinner tutorial again. Also the nerd dinner code hosted at codeplex has been updated to Asp.net MVC 2.0, and is a great reference to many of the new features. Burt mentioned the MVC Membership Starter kit (http://mvcmembership.codeplex.com/), I have personally tinkered with this, and it saves hours upon hours of time by automagically implementing authentication and role management built on a standardized db schema easily generated by a tool found in the framework 2.0 files somewhere.

Related

Which flavour of .net is better for E-Commerce Website

I am new to ASP.NET. and having big job converting ASP E-commerce website (It has lots of things those are customised like business logic, having own Database structure) to ASP.NET. Here, I am getting confused with some issues... I am writing this here after having lots of thinking of these issues but still they are unsolved. I have estimated 8-10 weeks for these job, and this is 2nd week is going on...
Is it better to create E-Commerce website from scratch or Modify current available Solutions?
If Creating new one, than which one is better ? ASP.NET Web Forms using N-tier Structure or MVC (Having no experience in this)
Is it true that MVC makes website access faster than Web Forms does?
Or its better to take some time, learn MVC and go ahead?
I think, may be there are questions like these, than please redirect me on that.
Thanks.
If you know web forms, use web forms. Web forms is still a good technology with great third-party controls. There's no reason to use an unfamiliar technology.
I looked up the EF mentioned and came across http://efvote.wufoo.com/forms/z7x3p9/
Apparently there is a list close to 1000 experts including MVPs that state that EF is no longer a viable option unless MS invests in its improvement.

GOOD tutorial(s) for learning the ASP.Net security/authentication framework

Through a lot of sticking my head in the sand, reinventing the wheel and general stubbornness, I've managed to go all this time (years) avoiding learning the built-in ASP.Net support for web application authentication, users and roles. Part of the reason is that rolling my own originally seemed like less work than getting my head around all the different layers of optional abstraction provided by the ASP.Net security framework and as such I came up with a nice library that worked fine for me.
I'm now trying to go back to using as much of the built in functionality of ASP.Net (MVC2/3, not WebForms) as possible, as I've found that the more non-standard functionality you build into an application, the harder it is for other developers to pick up your code and work with it.
The web is thick with half-tutorials, badly explained articles and information that excludes important beneath-the-hood information about the ASP.Net security framework.
Are there any good tutorials that rip the lid off ASP.Net security and show you how to use it and how it all works without trying to push you through wizards and specific provider models without understanding all of the options and their pros and cons?
This is a 18 part series articles from Scott Mitchell.
It's a very deep explanation of all the features that regards Authentication, Authorization and Membership providers in asp.net. I did never found a better source on this from the same author.
MSDN is the best for ripping the lid off: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff647070.aspx

ASP.Net Learning

Hi i am trying to build a website usign ASP.NET what is the best resource or way to learn it?
Also do i need DotNetNuke or something similar to manage my project?
Thanks in advance.
I highly recommend staying far, far away from DotNetNuke, or any CMS for that matter. If your goal is to learn the language then getting tangled up in a [horrible] CMS will only make it harder on you.
IMO, DotNetNuke would be overkill and will likely confuse you more than help as they have implemented many advanced designs to make it as modular as possible. I.e., it will not be clear why they are doing things the way they are.
The simplest means to learn is to do it. Create a regular ASP.NET site for some personal or non-critical purpose. In terms of resources, there are plenty on the Internet of course beyond search. Here are a few:
ASP.NET
MSDN Magazine
Scott Guthrie's blog
In addition to stuff on the Internet, I would read lots of books. You can either purchase them individually or you could look at an online resource which allows you read many such as Books 24x7 or Safari Books
The official site is a good start: http://www.asp.net/
The best way to learn is to do. Begin a website, and when you run into a problem you can't fix or figure out, check here or the sites others mentioned. I find books useful as references while I am working on a project but not as useful for reading straight through.
I also like www.codeproject.com when I am stuck.
DotNetNuke is an open source Content Management system (CMS). I would first learn ASP.Net. Try creating some sample web sites. As Thomas has rightly pointed out that DotNetNuke is an overkill.

Framework /starting point for social networking site in .NET?

I did do some googling and searching on this site but did not find exactly what I was looking for.
I'm hoping that someone can point me in the right direction here. I'm an ASP.NET/SQL Server developer and would like to develop a (intially) basic social networking site (gasp). Before I start from scratch with a blank solution in ASP.NET, I'm wondering if there are any frameworks out there ASP.NET specific that would serve as a good starting point. I'm already thinking of using the Google Maps jquery control for my Google Maps integration, as well as the 'sharethis' control for my social networking website sharing integration. Captcha for human authentication... But other than that I'm not sure what I can leverage... Nothing on Google jumped out at me on my search terms.
I'm also wondering if anyone else has done something similar and could share their post mortem/war stories with me.
I'm also open to learning a new platform/language if it would mean saving time - my experience is mostly in ASP.NET, so that is what I plan on using if it makes the most sense. My initial requirements are basic and realistic - profile setup (images, information, etc.), 'group' creation, Google Map integration, calendar controls shared by groups, SMS support, discussion forums among groups, searching for groups, OpenID integration most likely, etc. I am not going to try to build the entire site and then release it, but take baby steps and release pieces of functionality at a time.
Any advice is greatly appreciated for a broad question such as this. Thanks again.
I've found DotNetOpenAuth which seems to be a nice API for handling OpenID for ASP.NET web forms. They also have an ASP.NET MVC version
I also found MS Web Platform. This looks like some good stuff. Anyone ever use it and think it would do well for this sort of app?
I found a library for DotNetNuke called ActiveSocial. It's priced right ($500) and has more than the features I need but lacks some. I wonder if anyone here has ever used AS before. Is DNN easy to extend so I can add Google Maps functionality and such? It doesn't say anywhere on snowcovered (the vendor that sells AS) if AS comes with the source. If it didn't, then I might be screwed because I wouldn't be able to integrate the functionality I want.
I went through this exercise about 15 months ago when I built a SNS for a client. Hoping to find some basic framework for Friends, Chat, Profiles etc I was pretty disappointed.
That said, in retrospect I wish rather than building one that we would have purchased a solution like Community Server. As with most projects I looked at the problem scope with beer, no strike that, ambitious goggles on and the level of work to cover all the edge cases was more than I imagined.
Tread careful my friend, tread careful.
I think this is what you're looking for. Kigg is an open source ASP.NET MVC app that would be a good starting point for what you want. Here is the url: http://www.codeplex.com/Kigg
You can also find a site that is using this here: http://dotnetshoutout.com/
At the very least you will learn the ASP.NET MVC framework which is fantastic.
While not exactly intended to be used for social networking sites, both of these frameworks can help you so you don't have to start from scratch:
DotNetNuke: http://www.dotnetnuke.com/
Umbraco: http://umbraco.org/
Also, for an out of the box solution (no code involved) you could always try this: http://www.ning.com/
Good luck!

Asp.net - what are the best latest tools /frameworks, etc to look at . .

Ok, i have done a bunch of asp as well as asp.net right when it came out. A friend is starting a non profit organization and he wants me to put together a site for him. I figured i would kill 2 birds with one stone and look to freshen up my skills on the latest that the web has to offer in asp.net, web 2.0, etc.
The site requirements are pretty simple:
Organization mission statement
Users ability to register
Photos, content
Blog posts
Ability to donate directly on the site (maybe through paypal)
So my questions is what are the best tools to start here given its going to be hosted on windows ASP.net platform 3.5. Any other frameworks that i should be looking at.
Where is the best place to start?
I could easily build the site just putting a table together and a bunch of static pages but i figured if it made sense to utilize and help freshen my skills, it would be worth the efforts of the learning curve.
Feel free to suggest any other items that i haven't listed.
Have a look at ASP.Net MVC and JQUERY also take a look at S#Arp as a nice platform to build your site upon. It setups ASP.Net MVC, with nHibernate and has really good guidance on a good DDD structure.
In case you've overlooked it, The AJAX Control Toolkit -
addresses three needs. First it gives website developers a place to get components to make their web applications spring to life, second it gives a set of great examples for those wishing to write client-side code, and third it is a place for the best script developers to get their work highlighted.
For an open source functioning CMS system, look at N2. N2 is a lightweight CMS framework to help you build great web sites that anyone can update. The user interface is intuitive and empowering. The developer story is something quite exquisite.

Resources