Rating: 
Summary: A Great, Great Book!
Review: If you are looking to develop a website in ASP.NET, using C#, and a SQL Server database, then this book is for you. The authors build a website from beginning to end, taking into account so many things: coding standards, tier design, modular development, security, deployment, and maintenance, to name just a few areas. In addition, they target the situation that a lot of people will be in, which is in using a third-party hosting company to host their website. This book was tailor-made for my project.I didn't need several chapters that dealt with news management, polls, forums, advertising, and mailing lists, as my project didn't require those things. Still, for me, the book was well worth getting for everything else it contained. All in all, I found this to be unique among computer books. It takes you through the design and development of a real-world project throughout the whole book, step by step, and when you are done, you have a solid understanding of the entire ASP.NET website development process. Worth every bit of the money.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good book on how to start from the ground up.
Review: If you want to see how to plan, design, and build a website from the ground up then read this and use it as a reference. It could be better but these guys put a lot of work into showing you how to get results. I just didn't give it 5 stars because they get off on a few silly things but it is worth reading for beginners to intermediate.
Rating:
Summary: A rare gem
Review: If you've learned a little C# and ASP.NET then I can think of no quicker way of learning how to use them than working through this book. The book has only about 500 pages but it moves very swiftly and contains a huge amount of information. It covers the creation of a complete web site containing many commonly used modules such as news, forums, mailing lists, and polls. The entire web site source code can be downloaded from Wrox.com and is indeed needed as the book sometimes skips over the more mundane bits. To get the best from it you should have a working knowledge of C# and ASP.NET and have a few related reference books on hand. I have got most from this book while creating a new website based on their code. My own area of interest is more in client-server applications than in web sites but what I immediately liked about the book was the data access base classes they created simply that could be used for any client-server system. They also show the implementation of error handling onto the asp page base class that provides for easy yet robust error handling on all served pages. They show the extension of ASP.NET authentication to provide your own tiers of user-based security. They cover the use of many of the basic ASP.NET controls and provide a level of coverage which I was unable to get from the Microsoft documentation. They cover the design and implementation of a database using SQL Server. All in all there a lot here of interest to anyone creating any type of database application. Wrox are obviously making an effort to get their example code right, something they have too often failed to do in the past. This website works. I was able to get it up and running within 20 minutes. In summary I guess you could say I am seriously impressed. Well done Wrox.
Rating:
Summary: very well rounded book - must have
Review: It covers from naming conventions and good programming practices to any kind of functionality you would need to implement on a website - forums, advertising, file managing web interface, news management, polls, etc.
It takes a real life approach to it developing a commercial application an it touches on requirements, design, architecture, practically everything.
GREAT book.
Rating:
Summary: If you only buy one ASP.NET book - buy this one!
Review: My story is typical: I am an experienced programmer who needed to write an ASP.NET project for a client. I have ASP, SQL Server, COM+, and C# experience and needed a book to get my project jump started. This book is simply amazing! By reading and implementing the techniques discussed, my project is up and running and has a very solid architecture that will allow me to extend the website as my client's needs change. I buy A LOT of books and this is the first time I have ever been moved to write a review! Kevin and Marco, thank you very much for taking the time to write such a high quality book. George
Rating: 
Summary: Too focused
Review: Only thing I got out of this book was some Email techniques. It's too focused on a particular solution.
Rating:
Summary: Too focused
Review: Only thing I got out of this book was some Email techniques. It's too focused on a particular solution.
Rating:
Summary: Typical example of later Wrox .NET titles
Review: Rushed, unorganized. Typical example of the latest books from Wrox, right before Wiley bought them. There are better ASP.NET titles out there...
Rating:
Summary: reads more like a mystery than a reference book...
Review: The code is all over the place in this book. It is fragmented, very hard to follow and does not follow the Patterns and Practices from Microsoft for ASP.NET development. I realize the book is pretty old, but here are some major issues I found in the book... - namespace Vs folder structure Vs project name
varies from module to module - no step by step to make sure you can actually develop the application - very sketchy on how to use the IPrincipal and IIDentity classes - no "here's why we did it this way" descriptions It's just full of gaps and reads more like a mystery than a reference book. I usually find WROX books useful, but this one what a major disapointment. I hope that people consult the Microsoft docs before they use these approaches.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book, but some code bugs
Review: There is little here I can say that would not repeat the excellent marks given this book by other reviewers. I found this book to have lots of excellent ideas. The problems I did have were related with the code examples itself, particularly the code that extends the role-based security. Compiling this code immediately generates tons of errors. Trying to use these code segments in my own custom code generated the same. Mostly due to illegal casting whereby an attempt was made to case the Context.User.Identity object to a custom object. It can be rectified, but it is not without a good deal of head-scratching and a few hours of trial and error. Overall this book is extremely well organized and written and contains some of the best ideas I've seen for making truly scalable sites, even over the MS sample enterprise architectures.
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