ASP.Net Learning - asp.net

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.

Related

Umbraco alternative?

I've been trying to learn how develop websites with ASP.NET as well as setup a personal website to use as a online porfolio/resume. With my website I've decided to not try to reinvent the wheel and thus decided to use a premade ASP.NET based CMS.
After reading a lot of reviews I settled on Umbraco, but now I'm seeking out alternatives. I like Umbraco a lot but I keep running into problems. Since installing it on my host I haven't made any changes through the file system, or database directly. All changes have been through the admin site. Yet somehow I kept getting it into some state where I could not delete a datatype, and now I'm having problems removing or renaming one of my templates. I've searched for Umbraco forums for solutions and usually find that I have to run some SQL script workaround on the database to clean things up. This kind of thing is really not something I want to fiddle with for my personal site.
Has anyone else had a lot of problems with Umbraco like I have? Are there other free CMS systems out there that are more reliable, yet similar to Umbraco? Specifically I really like how Umbraco gives me total control over the HTML generated by my site. Simple is also better in this case. I'm not trying to create some kind social network/community portal/forum/blog site. There won't be multiple people logging onto this site or anything like that.
I've been reading a bit about N2, which I'm now starting to consider. I like that it's more developer based and that you setup page types through real .NET classes in Visual Studio. Again I don't want to attempt to build my own CMS from scratch, but at the same time I really don't like how hard it is to see what's going on under the hood with most other CMS systems.
I haven't used N2 so I can't comment on that, but alternatives you can consider are Orchard or FunnelWeb, both are on MVC 3 and Razor.
If you're wanting a blog that is mostly just a blog then FunnelWeb is a good option.
I'm currently writing a comparison between Orchard and Umbraco if you're interested as well.
I think you'll be happy you stuck with Umbraco. I was so frustrated with Umbraco when I first started working with it for the exact reasons you stated above. The issue with not being able to delete data types could mean that it's connected to something (IE: document or media type) somewhere and if you force delete it (IE: via the db) you could really mess up your install. <- speaking from experience.
I'm absolutely in love with Umbraco now though. I am completely confident that I can build just about anything I need with it now.
I think that my best piece of advice I can pull from my own experience is make sure that you've got your site architecture planned out thoroughly before starting to build it out in Umbraco. You don't want to be fiddling around in there afterward changing things and that's where you can really get yourself into some hot water.
Have fun!
if you want a minimal .net mvc4 cms with good performance check out puck https://bitbucket.org/yohsii/puck/overview
it adds very few concepts on top of what you need to know for .net mvc but it does require .net4.5 (and therefore VS2012) to work with.
it also uses localdb out of the box but if you don't want to install that just attach the database mdf file to regular sql server and change the connection string

How to start a new ASP.NET MVC site?

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.

Multiblog engine for asp.net

I know, different forms of this questions were asked on this site multiple times, but I haven't seen a single answer that would satisfy my need.
I need a ASP.NET based blogging engine that wouul use SQL Server as a back end and allow multiple independet blogs in one app instance. I'm writing a community website for major bank and blogging is the piece I'm not sure about.
Answers to other questions include a broad spectrum from BlogEngine.NET (doesn't support multiple blogs) to CommunityServer (a beast! blogging is just asmall piece of it). I don't want to install a full-blown CRM and just use blogging, I want a blogging engine. I don't mind to buy a commercial one but I can't find one.
I'm pretty much stuck, and any ideas are highly appreciated!
I would consider Oxite if you are confident in your markup and knowledge of html. Also, you can extend it with html editors to unsure better markup. I personally love how flexible the framework is.
Here is the Oxite website with more info. BTW, it was used to build MIX online for Microsoft.

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!

How to utilize my learning power in ASP.NET studies?

I've recently tried to switch to ASP.NET. Did I write switch? I meant to learn it, however I am not really sure how to proceed. I've opened several videos - and really watched them with enthusiasm however they seem to be very general. It's not like there are tons of sources on learning PHP.
Do you know some great learning procedure including the websites and sources to learn from so I can learn it ASAP?
I got one project waiting here -> the website is kinda simple Online flash games. The graphics and HTML's finished but I want to try to do it in ASP.NET with MS SQL. I'm already experienced in C# thus I won't need a lot of insight into that, although I'm absolutely unaware of how to do the website, cute urls, what the basic principles in coding are etc..etc.. :)
Since you have a PHP background, I'd recommend that you try out ASP.NET MVC - if you are familiar with the MVC design pattern, it should be a rather painless 'switch'. The "Learn ASP.NET MVC" section is very nice. There's also an RSS feed (on the site above) that contains many great blog posts regarding the technology; furthermore, there's the NerdDinner sample website with a complete tutorial. If you follow the last one, you should be ready with the site in no time :)
I have found these Microsoft videos to be very useful as study material. Videos

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