Some advice on Design Approach

[billyblue]

Hi Guys,

I have never started a big .net web project from scratch. I am looking to see what is the best approach. My application will have two main areas; a public section and a private section for members.

I currently administrate a .net website. It is a similar structure to the one I would like to create. The way it is designed is a number of folders eg

/public
/private
/customise

... etc

Each of these folders has a number of different pages eg /private/sendMessage.aspx

That is fair enough. That is one way of doing it. However I have also come across sites that only really have one page eg

index.aspx?action=sendmessage
index.aspx?action=myprofile

Is there any advantages/disadvantages to both approaches?

I was thinking about using the second approach but creating two pages

1. mysite/public/index.aspx
2. mysite/private/index.aspx

Then creating asp Panels for each section eg index.aspx?action=myprofile would make my profile visible then index.aspx?action=myprofile&myprofile=avatar would then furthermore make the avatar panel visible.

For simplicity and admin ease I was also thinking that the content for each panel could be held within a usercontrol. So the messageboard section for example would be stored within a user control 'messageboard.ascx' and just dropped into the index.aspx messageboard panel.

Would this be a good approach?

I want to follow best practices.

Thanks for reading, and apologies for the unusual question.