APress - Real World ASP.NET - Building a Content Management System (VBL).pdf - ASP.NET - pawellop2m

Real World ASP.NET: Building a Content Management System

by Stephen R.G. Fraser

ISBN: 1590590244

Provides theory, detail and code on CMS, including Version Control,

Workflow, and more.

Real-World ASP.NET—Building a Content

Management System

STEPHEN R. G. FRASER

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To my energy, Sarah, and bundle of joy, Shaina, with love.

About the Author

Stephen Fraser is the managing principal for Fraser Training, a corporate training

company focusing on .NET technologies. Stephen has over 15 years of IT experience

working for a number of consulting companies, ranging from the large consulting firms of

EDS and Andersen Consulting (Accenture) to a number of smaller e-business

companies. His IT experience covers all aspects of application and Web development

and management, ranging from initial concept all the way through to deployment.

Stephen currently resides, with his beautiful wife Sarah and daughter Shaina, in beautiful

Louisville, Kentucky.

Introduction

I've played with many of the commercial content management systems (CMSs) currently

on the market, and many have certain qualities or features in common. There is one

thing, however, that they all have in common: They are all overpriced.

Yes, they have hundreds of features. The fact is that when most Webmasters implement

a CMS, they usually don't even come close to using half of the features provided by the

CMS. Yes, a few Web sites are exceptions, but most don't need all the features and,

unfortunately, they don't have anything available as a substitute, or so they believe.

This book will show that Webmasters have an alternative because it describes the ins

and outs of a CMS. It goes as far as showing you how to build one of your own —

CMS.NET. But even if you never plan to write your own CMS, this book and, in

particular, CMS.NET will help you understand what is happening under the covers of its

more expensive siblings.

Programmers (and I am one, so I can say this) like to make the world think that what

they do is very mystical. In reality, it is actually very easy, if you have enough information

and the right tools at hand. This book should be enough of a head start that most good

programmers could, on their own, pump out a commercial-grade CMS in less than a

year. Heck, I coded CMS.NET in just over three months while writing this book.

The quick development time can be directly attributed to the power of Microsoft's .NET

and Visual Studio .NET. It saved me from many of the problems that occurred when I

tried to develop an equivalent CMS using other, nearly as powerful, competitive tools.

What Is This Book About?

This book is about CMSs (I'm sure you figured that out from the front cover), but more

specifically, it is a detailed programmer's look at what makes up, and how to develop, a

CMS using Microsoft's new ASP.NET, C#, and the .NET Framework.

Ultimately, it is a book that shows how to build a fully functional CMS at a fraction of the

cost of its commercial siblings. Even if you plan to buy a much more expensive CMS,

this book will explain the internal details of a CMS and should help you make the correct

decision when you make your purchase.

Who Is This Book Written For?

This book is for Web developers who want to learn the internal details of a CMS or who

want to create a CMS of their own. With this book, a Web developer should gain a good

understanding of how to build a CMS and where to find a lot of the code (prepackaged)

needed to build one.

It is for Webmasters who want a more cost-effective way to maintain their Web content.

This book will show that a Webmaster may, in fact, have another choice when it comes

to his CMS.

It is also for any intermediate- to advanced-level Web developers who already have a

basic understanding of the Microsoft .NET Framework and want to continue to expand

their knowledge. It is designed to provide a lot of helpful coding hints using C#,

ASP.NET, XML, and ADO.NET, within the Visual Studio .NET environment, in the area

of server-side Web development.

What Is in This Book?

The following is a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the book's contents:

Chapter 1 , "So, What Is a Content Management System Anyway?" introduces

the basic concepts of a CMS by breaking one down and explaining its most basic

elements. The chapter then continues by describing some common features and

benefits of most CMSs. Finally, it wraps up with a discussion on when a

commercial CMS is really merited.

Chapter 2 , "Version Control," covers version control, tracking, and rollback in

detail. It shows how a CMS uses versioning, why it is important, and its benefits.

Chapter 3 , "workflow," covers workflows, a very important feature found in all

CMSs. It shows what a workflow is, the roles it plays, and the benefits it provides

to a CMS. The chapter also discusses some things that a workflow designer

needs to examine when building the workflow.

Chapter 4 , "Personalization," starts by defining personalization and walks

through its objectives. It then explores many of the different types of

personalization available on the market today. It covers two major issues of

personalization: the law of diminishing returns and privacy. The chapter

concludes with the roles and benefits that personalization provides to CMSs.

Chapter 5 , "Basics of Web Architecture," first discusses Web architectures in

general and their three layers: database, application, and presentation. Then it

delves into the presentation layer in greater detail, showing how it is divided into

server and client sides communicating using HTTP. The chapter then covers

some of the more common client- and server-side technologies. It concludes by

showing Web architectures using the .NET Framework.

Chapter 6 , "ASP.NET, C#, and Visual Studio .NET," is a little refresher on C#,

ASP.NET, and Visual Studio .NET. It is designed to get everybody on a level

playing field when it comes to .NET Framework development.

Chapter 7 , "Database Development and ADO.NET," covers all essential

aspects of database development needed to develop a CMS system.

Chapter 8 , "XML," covers in great detail some of the many ways in which a

developer can access XML through the .NET Framework. It covers all facets of

XML that are needed to build a CMS and, in particular, what is needed by

CMS.NET.

Chapter 9 , "A Quick Overview of CMS.NET," starts with a brief description of

CMS.NET and then goes into how to install it. The chapter finishes off with a brief

tutorial.

Chapter 10 , "Initializing CMS.NET," covers the setup subsystem of CMS.NET.

It starts by showing how to navigate from page to page. Then it discusses

web.config and how to programmatically update and extract information from it.

The chapter also shows how CMS.NET separates application development and

database development with the use of database helper classes.

Chapter 11 , "Getting Content into the System," covers the CURVeS (creating,

updating, removing, viewing, and submitting) of CMS.NET's content

management application. It shows how to break a Web page into frames and

then revisits XML with the XML-driven NavBar (Navigation Bar). The chapter also

covers error handling in some detail. It finishes by covering the Content database

and its helper class.

Chapter 12 , "Cookies, Authentication, Authorization, and Encryption," covers

security — in particular, cookies, authentication, authorization, and encryption. It

starts with a brief discussion of ASP.NET's security and then covers CMS.NET's

security in more detail.

Chapter 13 , "Displaying Dynamic Content," first covers the basics of what

dynamic content is. Then it shows dynamic content in practice within CMS.NET's

three-level dynamic navigation model. The chapter also covers both static and

dynamic User Controls in detail.

Chapter 14 , "Using a Workflow to Enter Content," covers role-based content

administration. It describes CMS.NET's workflow and the roles it requires. It also

discusses inter-role communication and e-mail alerts.

Chapter 15 , "Registered Users and Protected Content," covers registering

users and restricting content. It starts by describing why you might want to

restrict content and covers the privacy policy Web page. It then covers user

profiles and the two most common methods of retrieving user information: the

quick blitz and the slow retrieval. The chapter ends by showing how to change

CMS.NET to implement registration and protected content.

Conventions

I've tried to keep the number of different styles used in this book to a minimum. You

didn't buy it for pretty icons, but rather its content (I hope). Here are examples of the

styles used and explanations of what they mean:

Important words and words being defined are in italic font.

Bold font is use for things you must enter into an edit field.

Code font is used for code, URLs, and e-mail addresses that appear in regular

text.

Every once in a while I will include a Note, Tip, or Warning about something:

Note

Pay attention.

Tip

Tricks that might help.

Warning

Danger ahead.

Code that is highlighted in gray can mean one of two things: it is code that you need to

enter yourself, or it is code of direct interest to you. Gray background code looks like this:

public Content(string h, string s)

{

headline = h;

story = s;

}

Otherwise, code has been autogenerated by Visual Studio .NET or it is something you

have entered a while ago and has no bearing on what you are coding now:

< %@ Page language=" c#" Codebehind=" DCViewer.aspx.cs"

AutoEventWireup=" false"

Inherits=" Ch06Example.WebForm1" % >

< !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" >

< HTML >

Obviously, if some of the code is autogenerated and some is manually entered, you will

find both styles in the code at the same time.

How to Reach the Author

I would like to hear from you. Feel free to e-mail me at

< srgfraser@contentmgr.com >. I will respond to every e-mail that I can. Questions,

comments, and suggestions are all welcome. Also, feel free to visit a copy of CMS.NET

on the Internet at www.contentmgr.com . All registered users have the capability to

author content on the site if they feel so inclined. Also, the www.contentmgr.com site

is where the newest release of CMS.NET can be found, along with any user/reader

contributions.

Oh, by the way, thank you for buying my book.

Chapter 1: So, What is a Content

Management System Anyway?

Overview

This seems like an obvious question with which to start the book. Yet, the problem is that

the answer, even if worded plainly, is far from obvious: A content management system

(CMS) is a system that manages the content components of a Web site.

That's it. Seems simple enough, right? Why then, if you ask this question of two or more

different Web professionals, do you get two or more different answers or, more precisely,

two or more different "interpretations" of the preceding answer? The problem revolves

around the ambiguity of the word "content" or, more accurately, the scope of the content

or what portions of the content are contained under the umbrella of a CMS.

Another problem is that nowhere does this definition define what core functionality

makes up a CMS. Most CMSs make their names by how many additional features they

add. A true way of telling whether a CMS is any good is by gauging how well it does the

core functionality that makes up a CMS. Without defining what the core functionality of a

CMS is, there is no level playing field for measuring CMSs against each other.

This chapter will provide the information you need to determine what a content

management system is, hopefully removing the ambiguity of the preceding simple

definition ... which brings us to the first major area of ambiguity.

What Is Content?

Most professionals will agree that content is the "stuff" (don't you love the technical

jargon we software developers throw around?) found on a Web site. This "stuff" on a

Web site can be broken down into two categories:

The information — such as text and images — that you see on a Web site when

you visit it

The applications or software that runs on the Web site's servers and actually

displays the information

Now comes the ambiguity. Some professionals will tell you that the domain of a CMS

consists only of the information, whereas others will tell you that it consists of both the

information and the applications. So, which definition is correct?

At first glance, one might say the all-encompassing definition is a more accurate

explanation of the word "content." The question should be asked, though: Do you need

to manage or can you manage the applications in the same way as the information?

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