ASP.NET Hosting Options

Web applications are typically designed, created, and tested in a development environment that is accessible only to the programmers working on the site. Once the application is ready to be released, it is moved to a production environment where the site can be accessed by anyone on the Internet. This deployment process introduces a number of challenges:

• A production environment must exist and be properly setup before an ASP.NET application can be deployed; moreover, the production environment must be kept up to date with the latest security patches.


• The correct set of markup files, code files, and support files must be copied from the development environment to the production environment. For data-driven applications, this might require copying the database schema and/or data, as well.


• There may be configuration differences between the two environments. The database connection string or e-mail server used in the development environment will likely be different than the production environment. What's more, the behavior of the application may depend on the environment. For example, when an error occurs in development the error's details can be displayed on screen, but when an error occurs in production, a user-friendly error page should be displayed instead, and the error details e-mailed to the developers.

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Security Basics and ASP.NET Support

This is the first tutorial in a series of tutorials that will explore techniques for authenticating visitors through a web form, authorizing access to particular pages and functionality, and managing user accounts in an ASP.NET application.
Introduction
What is the one thing forums, eCommerce sites, online email websites, portal websites, and social network sites all have in common? They all offer user accounts. Sites that offer user accounts must provide a number of services. At a minimum, new visitors need to be able to create an account and returning visitors must be able to log in. Such web applications can make decisions based on the logged in user: some pages or actions might be restricted to only logged in users, or to a certain subset of users; other pages might show information specific to the logged in user, or might show more or less information, depending on what user is viewing the page.
This is the first tutorial in a series of tutorials that will explore techniques for authenticating visitors through a web form, authorizing access to particular pages and functionality, and managing user accounts in an ASP.NET application. Over the course of these tutorials we will examine how to:

• Identify and log users in to a website


• Use ASP.NET’s Membership framework to manage user accounts
  Create, update, and delete user accounts


• Limit access to a web page, directory, or specific functionality based on the logged in user


• Use ASP.NET’s Roles framework to associate user accounts with roles


• Manage user roles


• Limit access to a web page, directory, or specific functionality based on the logged in user’s role - Customize and extend ASP.NET’s security Web controls

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