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.

[mendhak]

The school of thought which drives pages like

index.aspx?action=sendmessage
index.aspx?action=killpuppy

is from the ancient days when disk space wasn't cheap. Now, disk space is cheap. There is no need to reuse a page (especially an index page) for two unrelated actions. A page should be named after what the page is about. A querystring was meant to define different ways that the same concept is available.

So this makes sense

article.aspx?articleid=293
article.aspx?articleid=999


When you start bunging together several bits of functionality into a single page, then you create a maintenance nightmare for no reason. You'll have to load up controls dynamically and perform different actions all based on the querystring. No point.

If a page sends a message, then make it send a message.

Further, if the pages are public, then you want the URL to reflect at least a tiny bit of what it's about.

[billyblue]

The school of thought which drives pages like

index.aspx?action=sendmessage
index.aspx?action=killpuppy

is from the ancient days when disk space wasn't cheap. Now, disk space is cheap. There is no need to reuse a page (especially an index page) for two unrelated actions. A page should be named after what the page is about. A querystring was meant to define different ways that the same concept is available.

So this makes sense

article.aspx?articleid=293
article.aspx?articleid=999


When you start bunging together several bits of functionality into a single page, then you create a maintenance nightmare for no reason. You'll have to load up controls dynamically and perform different actions all based on the querystring. No point.

If a page sends a message, then make it send a message.

Further, if the pages are public, then you want the URL to reflect at least a tiny bit of what it's about.

ok understood.

May I ask would you be inclined to go for one or two masterpages with regard to a public and private area. Ideally one would be easier to manage using logged in logged out view.

I am trying to make the site as easy to manage as possible

Thanks for all your help again

[mendhak]

That bit depends on what you want the site to look like. If the public and admin pages will look the same, then a single Master Page should do the trick. If the admin master pages have little 'extra' bits on them, then have a look at nested master pages.