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Create a Web Portal Module
Extend the open source DotNetNuke ASP.NET portal with an add-in module for collecting user suggestions.
by Stan Schultes

Posted September 30, 2003

Technology Toolbox: VB.NET, SQL Server 2000, ASP.NET

ASP.NET's many advantages include a compiled code environment, excellent caching and security mechanisms, and a "fully wired," event-driven programming model rivaling that of desktop apps. Code reusability has reached a new level with user and server controls, and the underlying .NET Framework exposes a huge portion of the Windows OS. However, building a full-blown corporate Web app can still be a big leap. One way to make this leap successfully is to implement a Web portal—a Web application that provides an easily extensible interface to various types of Web-based information.

Microsoft offers a number of ASP.NET Starter Kits for Web portal apps to give you a jump start (see Additional Resources). Commercial portals are also available. They usually come with a set of add-in modules for managing Web links, documents, announcements, calendars, contacts, events, forums, and so on. These higher-end portals typically have facilities for content management and publishing, managing workflows and document histories, sending e-mail, and other site-management-related activities.

You can also take advantage of open source Web portal projects for ASP.NET. An open source project consists of a group of independent developers who cooperate on a software product in the hope of enjoying greater success than they would achieve individually. Open source software comes with a license that lets you use and extend the code free of charge, as long as you don't change the copyrights or license, or sell the product itself (see Additional Resources).

DotNetNuke (DNN) and Rainbow are the two major open source Web portal projects for ASP.NET, and each has its own unique variants (see Additional Resources). Both projects are creating high-quality portals based on Microsoft's sample IBuySpy portal. Rainbow is C#-based, and DotNetNuke is VB.NET-based. I'll show you how to use the DNN project's portal (due for a new major release in fall 2003) to create an add-in module for collecting user suggestions.