I'm pleased to announce the public availability of our latest addition to

the IBuySpy line of ASP.NET Developer Solution Kits --> the IBuySpy Portal.

You can either download it (and install it locally) or run it online today

from: http://www.ibuyspy.com.

The IBuySpy Portal Solution Kit demonstrates how to build a real-world

portal site using ASP.NET. Out of the box, the Portal Kit is configured as

the employee portal for the fictional IBuySpy company. However, you can

simply replace the content to create your own portal site that runs either

on the Internet or an intranet (we have built-in role-based security

infrastructure that includes support for both windows and forms based

authentication). 

The Portal Solution Kit includes a web-based administration tool to

dynamically control the portal UI layout and security settings, as well as

online content editing support for each of the 11 portal modules we ship

with out of the box (these modules include: discussion board, announcements,

contact management, document management, etc). Consequently -- you don't

need to write any code to create, customize and administer a portal or team

website of your own. 

You can also extend the portal by building your own custom portal modules

that provide additional functionality (for example: a sales tracking module

for your company). These can be cleanly implemented with a minimum amount of

code as ASP.NET User Controls (.ASCX files). They can then be easily added

into the portal to take advantage of the Portal's built-in security, partial

page output caching and layout features (all of these features are

configurable using the Portal Admin Tool). 

The Portal Solution Kit includes complete and thoroughly-documented source

code, which we encourage you to freely use (no restrictions apply) as a

template for building your own applications. Both VB.NET and C# versions of

the code can be either downloaded and browsed online from www.ibuyspy.com.

The resulting portal application fully supports both IE and Netscape

browsers. We will also in the coming weeks add support for mobile devices

(including support for WAP/WML) to the Solution Kit. 

A dedicated IBuySpy email listserv (run by a 3rd party) is available for

discussions/questions about both the IBuySpy Portal as well as our previous

IBuySpy Store solution kit. You can signup for it directly off of the

www.ibuyspy.com home page. The ASP.NET team will be monitoring this list

closely and will be answering posts (and providing additional code samples)

there. 

We hope you enjoy the portal and find it useful for building and

implementing solutions of your own. We had a lot of fun building it... :-) 

Happy coding, 

- Scott