Starter Kits Rule!

If you're looking to get a site up in a hurry, with a minimum of fuss, then you owe it to yourself to check out the ASP.NET Starter Kits, downloadable from where else but http://www.asp.net/. These kits, which are currently in beta, are offered in the following flavors:

  • Time Tracker - offers project-based time tracking, including generating charts and reports.
  • Reports - offers reporting and charting functionality, including Master-Detail reports and support for automatic page breaks in printing.
  • Community - Offers theme-based UI customization, pre-built content modules, robust administrative support, and support for multiple sites/communities from a single codebase.
  • Commerce - Updated version of the IBuySpy Store.
  • Portal - Updated version of the IBuySpy Portal.

What's really cool about these starter kits is just how simple they make putting together a site or application. With the Community Starter Kit, I was able to completely replace the site for my company, Graymad Enterprises, Inc. (including putting together a customized page to consume the RSS feed from this very blog) in a matter of a few hours, and come out with a site that was both better looking and more functional than the site I had coded by hand (the cobbler's children come to mind). I also put together a brand new family site in just a couple of days, complete with both public and private sections, user management, photo galleries, content rating and comments, and more.

Each starter kit is provided with documentation and a whitepaper, and if the Community Starter Kit is any indication, all are very well commented and easily modified. The starter kits are also supported with their own set of forums hosted on www.asp.net. I'll be providing more insights into the starter kits as I play with them more, but right now they strike me as fulfilling an important part of the promise of ASP.NET...helping us write less code, and be more effective and efficient. They're also a very good way to see what other developers have done with ASP.NET, and perhaps come up with a few ideas of your own.

I had delayed playing with the starter kits out of beta overload. Now, I'm just sorry that I didn't look sooner. It's cool stuff!

1 Comment

  • I have heard about IBuySpy for awhile, but haven't looked at them either for all the other distractions I have created for myself. Turns out that IBuySpyStore will work perfectly for a client that I am developing a solution for. And, seeing the portal code, I can't help but think of the ease of maintenance for redesigning xmlandasp.net.





    Thanks for the head's up.

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