Dynamic websites quick and easy using ASP.NET without knowing ASP.NET

Question

I am a developer with a strong .NET background. In my spare time I will soon have the task to build a small an simple website with some dynamic features. So I guess ASP.NET would be the right choice. The problem is here that I have almost no experience with ASP.NET and my time is very limited. What would you suggest how I should approach this? The requirements are as follows:

1. I need to get it running quick and easy. It shouldn't take much time.
2. It should run robust and secure meaning it should require as little maintainace work as possible and it shouldn't be all to easy to compromise the site.
3. It must provide the following dynamic features: one or two newsfeeds/blogs with image galleries, a guestbook and a simple way for the website owners to add news and images and change the content of the pages (not he site structure) without having to know much about webtechnology at all.
4. It should be open to new features. For example some day there might be a rating system for events.
5. It shouldn't cost anything except my time and the webhosting.

Should I use the ASP.NET MVC framework or something more high level such as Oxite or DotNetNuke? IS there a Web Framework you'd suggest? Or can/should I do all this without ASP.NET using free services from the web (doodle, google, windows live and so on).

Answer 1

Given that you're already a .NET developer I would extend your skillset with ASP.NET. It sounds like the StackOverflow stack would suit you. SO uses:

• Linq2Sql - quick to get up and running, easy to use and easy to maintain
• ASP.NET MVC - great for data driven applications, flexible

Also, other time / maintenance savers you might want to look into:

• MasterPages - allow you to dynamically apply styles to content pages
• Themes - useful for centralising a site's style

My experience of frameworks is that it may take you as much time to familiarise yourself and then implement the custom elements as to code them yourself, unless you're really focused on content management / portal style specifically (in which case it might be worth the effort of looking into DotNETNuke).

Answer 2

Have you checked out Blogengine.NET? Although geared specifically towards blogging, it is relatively straightforward to customize it for your particular needs, based on your requirements in the question.

From the product description -

Project Description BlogEngine.NET may be the simplest and most light weight ASP.NET blog at the moment, but still full featured. Here are some of the features:

• Multi-author support
• Pingbacks and trackbacks
• Event based for plug-in writers
• Theming directly in master pages and user controls
• Gravatar and coComments implemented
• Live preview on commenting
• Comment moderation
• BlogML import/export
• Extension model
• Code syntax highlighting
• Mono support
• Full editing and creation of pages that are not posts
• Extended search capabilities
• Tag cloud
• Self updating blogroll
• Runs entirely on XML or SQL Server. Your choice.

Answer 3

I was going to suggest DotNetNuke. It's got the extensibility you're looking for as well as a pretty loyal following amongst it's users

Answer 4

Your 3rd and 4th requirements sort of conflict with requirement 1 and 2 if you are looking to build your own. So, I would recommend using an existing framework like DotNetNuke. Or use a pre-built CMS like Umbraco.

You mentioned using Google. I think you should at least check out Google Sites (http://www.google.com/sites). I'm not sure if it fits all your needs (it probably does not) but I think it can do a pretty good job if you are looking for a simple portal type site.

Answer 5

I am a .NET/Microsoft oriented developer too but I found WordPress (http://wordpress.org/) to be perfect (as far as users are concerned) for providing an extensible, simple CMS-type site.

Being a .NET developer doesn't necessarily mean ASP.NET is the right route for developing a web-based site.

WordPress ticks all your boxes...

1. Get it running "up and quick" - WordPress has its famous 5-minute install.

2. Robust and Secure with little maintenance - well, there are a lot of WordPress installations out there with an active user community so you'd like to think it was more robust and secure than many of the other offerings.

3. newsfeeds, image galleries, guestbooks, all readily available free plug-ins for WordPress.

4. Open to new features. PHP isn't rocket science and you could roll your own plug-ins for ratings systems or whatever very quickly.

5. It's free.

I know it can be a bit of a culture shock using PHP but I've used WordPress with great success to very quickly run several departmental micro-sites running on IIS and most importantly, the users find it easy to use and it does what they want and I can tweak it easily if needs be.

Just another option anyway.