Website Structue

Question

I’m trying to come up with the best solution on how to set up my site.

I'm using asp.net MVC which I'm fairly new at.

The site consists of different areas which have their own stylesheets and images suited to the area they belong.

The layout of each of theses areas is the same, so I would like each to inherit layout from the same Master Page. Otherwise I would have to create 16+ Master Pages for each area and it’s only the stylesheet and images that are different.

The other issue I have is that each area needs to display news that’s related only to the specific area. So each area needs to know what it is.

I’m trying to find the best approach so that I’m not repeating code and can update the site easily in the future.

I've been looking at the link below.

http://www.asp.net/LEARN/mvc/tutorial-13-cs.aspx

I think i may be able to use a base controller class to solve my areas problem.

I'm wondering though if I have a link with an ID can my base controller pick up that ID and use it to return veiw data to my views?

Any advice or ideas would be really helpful.

Thanks

Jemes

Answer 1

I always suggest http://www.sharparchitecture.net. As for areas, S#arp is currently being adopted to ASP.NET MVC v2 which does support areas, I think the release is very close - meanwhile it should also work from git repository.

You can learn more about MVC v2 areas here to see if that suits your needs. Here you can see some flaws (adding at runtime) in areas support, so beware.