Thank you very much. Much appreciated!

In the view for createnewsletter.aspx the body field is set to model.htmlbody. Since this is not editing an existing newsletter but creating a new one, I am wondering if this value should be left out? I bring this up because when I tried to pull up the page to test the system, I got a null reference exception.

That view is also used for the Edit action. So it cannot be removed. I just tried to reproduce this in the latest code released on CodePlex and was unable to. Can you try getting the latest code.

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I downloaded the latest one from 5/21, which went up the day after I had downloaded the last version. I didn't notice. And the error didn't come up this time. Thank you.

And, all of the things we discussed last week didn't occur either.

However, when I open the project by either double clicking on the project file or the sln file, the test project doesn't come up.

Test project?

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oops sorry. That's what I get for trying to work on projects late at night. I am working on three other ones while looking at this one and I got confused.

Is there a reason why you dropped the original DAL+BLL logic replacing it with Linq to Sql? AFAIK dev guidelines suggest a custom approach for accessing data and Marco's seemed quite elegant and flexible...
I got used to and applied the concept in more than 30 websites and now I'm stuck trying to understand what an ORM may offer vs. a hand-crafted solution...

I read the excellent Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 and I was a bit disoriented while in the model chapter.

Sorry, but need some feedback on this before moving to MVC

Marco in the original booked used what is called a provider model. Back in ASP.NET 2.0 this model was being pushed as the new way to program. Since then there has been a large push for a more separated data access model. Such as nHibernate or Entity Framework, where you create your domain objects (your BLL) and then use reflection, configuration, separation, and IoC to do all the DAL operations.

There is another book which deals with the beer house and Entity Framework called ASP.NET 3.5 Website Programming.

For our book we decided to update the model to something a little more modern, that was easy to use, and didn't step on the work that was being done in the other book. That is why we choose LINQ-to-SQL.

Also the DAL from the original book is an hand crafted ORM vs an ORM designed for mass consumption like LINQ-to-SQL. If you would like to learn more about MVC in a quick synopsis. Please check out my 7 part series on my blog, which is a preview release of Chapter 2 of my book.

http://www.coderjournal.com/2008/12/...ew-controller/

That explains ASP.NET MVC in a quick and consise manor. But to answer your question about what a model is, you can start here:

http://www.coderjournal.com/2009/01/...t-5-the-model/

A model is basically anything you can retreive and store some kind of data in. For smaller applications the model will be the DAL, or larger applications the model will be the BLL. Hope this answers you questions. Also your custom designed DAL that you have used on 30+ sites can still be your model in MVC, so all your work isn't lost. :)

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Thanks Nick... I tried to create the first web site learning from NerdDinner and comparing it with TheBeerHouse MVC (I bought both books... but the latter still not shipping at this time!). Not being a real programmer (my fault, but I'm trying to learn and understand better since I'm a Marketing specialist), I have difficulties to put acquired knowledge in to the Model as BLL. i.e., how would you retrieve categories from the 2.0 custom provider model in the newest MVC? These are the type of questions that I'm not able to find since the community is nowadays focusing on, as you said, more modern ways to achieve the same results.

Or do you suggest to leave the old custom ORM and learn something new. Linq to SQL seems quite simple (although with some issues, in particular with cached queries)... Don't know for others...