You guys need to understand the way this book was designed. This book is NOT intended to be a step-by-step set of plans to build a content-driven website. Instead, the book is about the DESIGN of a website. They include some sample code segments in the book so they can explain how it works. They also have some limited step-by-step instructions, but it's not supposed to have all of the code in the book, and it's not supposed to have all of the detailed instructions.
They give you all of the code in the code download. The code download has also been updated since the book was published, so it doesn't match the book in every detail.
If the book were to discuss every line of code, then it would be too big to be useful!
This book is for people who are already familier with C# (or
VB.NET) and ASP.NET. Look on the back cover where it says "What you need to know". I assume the
VB book also has this section - I only have the C# book.
With that in mind, they are not trying to teach you every detail, but rather they want to teach design concepts. They put code samples in the book to illustrate the points they are trying to make. It's a book for developers with a mid-level of experience who want to understand how to put together the pieces they already know into a full-featured website.
Eric