Book Image

ASP.NET 3.5 CMS Development

Book Image

ASP.NET 3.5 CMS Development

Overview of this book

ASP.NET 3.5 is equipped with a built-in security system, standard design templates, and easy configurations for database connections, which make it the ideal language for building a content management system. With the strong community support for the ASP.NET platform, you can be assured that what you write today will be around and supported for years to come. You can imagine how easy it is to get lost in the myriad features especially if you are a newcomer. This book shows you how to make use of ASP.NET's features and create a functional Content Management System quickly and conveniently. You will learn how to build your site and see the different ways in which you can customize your code to fit your needs. With this book in hand, you can easily set up users and groups, create valuable content for your users, and manage the layout of your site efficiently. All you need is a basic understanding of coding and a desire to learn, and this book will take care of the rest. This book will teach you to get your site up and running quickly, and maintain its content even if you have little or no web design or programming experience. It will give you all the knowledge you need to use the tools as well as the code required to make yourself a strong developer far beyond your site. It begins with setting up your programming environment and coding a Content Management System. You will learn how to install and configure a database and connect it to your CMS. You will be able to create content and manage the layout of your site, and also make it available beyond the browser. At the end of this book, you will have designed and built a CMS that allows you to administer an Articles section, Images and Files sections, as well as a full set of Administrator tools for your site.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
ASP.NET 3.5 Content Management System Development
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
Preface

Master Pages


Earlier you were introduced to a feature called Master Pages, but what exactly are they? The idea behind them is the one that's been around since the early days of development. The idea that you can inherit the layout of one page for use in another is the one that has kept many developers scrambling with Includes and User Controls. This is where Master Pages come into play. They allow you to lay out a page once and use it over and over. By doing this, you can save yourself countless hours of time, as well as being able to maintain the look and feel of your site from a single place. By implementing a Master Page and using ContentPlaceHolders, your page is able to keep its continuity throughout.

In Chapter 4, you saw a simple implementation of a Master Page that contained two ContentPlaceHolder controls (ContentPlaceholder1 and Head, identified by their IDs). The Default.aspx page was set up to use the Master Page that was created. We'll expand upon all of this in a bit more detail...