Building Websites with the ASP.NET Community Starter Kit, Packt
Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio
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C# Online.NET Book Review
ASP.NET Community Starter Kit (CSK) is a free download which lets you set up a community Web site quickly and easily. But, it includes so many features and accomodates such extensive customization that a book like this one is essential to success.
This book is a tight, focused little volume with lots of instructive code samples and useful illustrations—mostly screenshots. The book is well organized, to the point, and very readable.
Although the book covers the entire process from installation through customization through deployment, there is no superfluous information to wade through—essentials only. The authors use step-by-step tutorials for learning by example appropriate to CSK beginners.
This book uses the C# language version of the CSK. The reader should already be familiar with both ASP.NET and C#; because, there is no basic coverage of either. This is not an ASP.NET for beginners book: You will learn to write a content module by yourself.
The book is short and sweet; so, it does not go into too much detail on every subject. You are likely to want more information on customizing skins and themes which you can find on the ASP.NET forums.
Bottom line
Building Websites with the ASP.NET Community Starter Kit will guide you deftly through creating your own professional-looking, community Web site.
Publisher's description
A comprehensive guide to understanding, implementing, and extending the powerful and freely available application from Microsoft.
- Learn .NET architecture through building real-world examples
- Understand, implement, and extend the Community Starter Kit
- Learn to create and customize your own website
- For ASP.NET developers with a sound grasp of C#
A complete and practical guide to delivering content-rich community-driven websites based on the freely available ASP.NET Community Starter Kit from Microsoft. Aimed at experienced ASP.NET developers with responsibility for delivering robust and feature-rich websites, fast and effectively. First the book gives you a clear understanding of the architecture of the application. Then, it walks you through the implementation process, outlining choices and techniques. Having mastered the standard application, youll learn how to customize and extend the framework to deliver customer features and to integrate with other applications.
In Detail
Microsoft's ASP.NET Community Starter Kit (CSK) is a powerful, freely available application that allows you to quickly create a fully featured community-driven website, complete with article and news management, downloads, forums, and user handling. Supported and tested by thousands of developers in the ASP.NET community across the world, the Community Starter Kit offers you the luxury of a scalable and extensible architecture, and the ability to brand your own site. This book will take you inside the Community Starter Kit, allowing you to harness its power for easily creating your own websites. The book is structured to help you understand, implement and extend the Community Starter Kit:
- Understand how the Community Starter Kit works.
- Build the skills to implement your own site.
- Develop the confidence to extend the system for your own needs.
With this book, you will learn how to:
- Install and configure the CSK
- Find your way around the CSKs towering range of features
- Create and administer community websites
- Become familiar with the common CSK ASP.NET controls
- Customize your CSK site
- Discover the secrets of the CSK core architecture
- Explore the inner workings of CSK modules
- Extend the CSK by creating new modules
- Customize existing modules with Web controls
- Add an RSS feed to share your content with others
- Deploy your CSK website
This book is for ASP.NET developers with a sound grasp of C# and access to Visual Studio .NET. This book uses the Visual Studio. NET version of the ASP.NET Community Starter Kit.
Approach
This book isn't written as a standard tutorial, it has been broken down into two halves to give you full understanding of the Community Starter Kit and then the confidence to create, administer and customize your own site. The second half of the book includes plenty of code, but the emphasis is firmly on guiding you through the techniques to create, extend and customize your own module.
Who this book is written for
This book has been written for ASP.NET developers with a sound grasp of C# and access to Visual Studio .NET. This book uses the Visual Studio. NET version of the ASP.NET Community Starter Kit.
Table of Contents (abbreviated)
Introduction
Chapter 1: The ASP.NET Community Starter Kit
Chapter 2: Touring a Community Starter Kit Website
Chapter 3: Creating and Administering Community Websites
Chapter 4: Themes, Skins, and the Common Controls
Chapter 5: Customizing your Website
Chapter 6: The Community Starter Kit Core Architecture
Chapter 7: Inside a CSK Module
Chapter 8: Creating a New Module
Chapter 9: Customization with User Controls
Chapter 10: Adding an RSS Feed
Chapter 11: Deployment
Appendix A: CSK Controls
Index
About the author(s)
Cristian Darie is a software enginner with experience in a wide range of modern technologies, and the author of numerous technical books, including the popular "Beginning E-Commerce" series. Having worked with computers since he was old enough to press the keyboard, he initially tasted programming success with a first prize in his first programming contest at the age of 12. From there, Cristian moved on to many other similar achievements, and now he is studying distributed application architectures for his PhD degree. He always loves hearing feedback about his books, so don’t hesitate dropping a "hello" message when you have a spare moment.
K. Scott Allen is the Chief Software Architect for Medisolv, Inc and holds MCP and MCSD certifications. In 12 years of software development Scott has worked on everything from real time firmware in 8 bit embedded devices to highly scalable Internet applications connecting COM+ and J2EE components with web services. Living in Hagerstown, Maryland, Scott tries to play as much softball as possible during the summer. Scott is a cofounder of the site www.OdeToCode.com, a .NET developer resource built using the Community Starter Kit.
