I have a new tutorial series on the www.asp.net website that looks at hosting an ASP.NET website with a web host provider. The tutorials are aimed at beginning to intermediate ASP.NET developers interested in learning the ins and outs on how to get a small- to medium-sized ASP.NET application online. As with my previous tutorials on the www.asp.net website (Data Access, Security, and Master Pages), these tutorials include both C# and Visual Basic versions. Each tutorial can be downloaded as a PDF for offline viewing or printing and each tutorial includes a working website that illustrates the concepts discussed in the tutorial (and can be downloaded as a ZIP file).
The first six hosting tutorials serve as an introduction to the series and provide an overview of core concepts.

ASP.NET Hosting Options [VB | C#] - ASP.NET web applications are typically designed, created, and tested in a local development environment and need to be deployed to a production environment once it is ready for release. This tutorial provides a high-level overview of the deployment process and serves as an introduction to this tutorial series.
Determining What Files Need to Be Deployed [VB | C#] - What files need to be deployed from the development environment to the production environment depends in part on whether the ASP.NET application was built using the Web Site Model or Web Application Model. Learn more about these two project models and how the project model affects deployment.
Deploying Your Site Using an FTP Client [VB | C#] - The simplest way to deploy an ASP.NET application is to manually copy the necessary files from the development environment to the production environment. This tutorial shows how to use an FTP client to get the files from your desktop to the web host provider.
Deploying Your Site Using Visual Studio [VB | C#] - Visual Studio includes tools for deploying a website. Learn more about these tools in this tutorial.
Common Configuration Differences Between Development and Production [VB | C#] - In earlier tutorials we deployed our website by copying all of the pertinent files from the development environment to the production environment. However, it is not uncommon for there to be configuration differences between environments, which necessitates that each environment have a unique Web.config file. This tutorial examines typical configuration differences and looks at strategies for maintaining separate configuration information.
Core Differences Between IIS and the ASP.NET Development Server [VB | C#] - When testing an ASP.NET application locally, chances are you are using the ASP.NET Development Web Server. However, the production website is most likely powered IIS. There are some differences between how these web servers handle requests, and these differences can have important consequences. This tutorial explores some of the more germane differences.
The next set of tutorials examines the challenges in deploying data-driven applications and maintaining development and production databases.
Enjoy!
-- Hosting Tutorials Homepage: http://www.asp.net/learn/hosting/-- ASP.NET Vidoes, Tutorials, and Other Learning Material - http://www.asp.net/learn/

All successful software projects resemble one another; each failed project fails in its own way.

Over the past several weeks, some dedicated developers have been undertaking a grand Code Trip, travelling around the Western half of the United States in a bus speaking and hanging out at Code Camps, User Groups, and conferences. On Tuesday, March 25th the Code Trip bus rolls into San Diego to take over the San Diego .NET User Group meeting (along with regular speaker Michele Leroux Bustamante).
For more information, and to register for the event, visit http://thecodetrip.com/1/san-diego-dotnet-user-group. Should be a fun and interesting night.

A little over a year ago I created two ASP.NET validation controls that are missing from the ASP.NET Toolbox: CheckBoxValidator and CheckBoxListValidator. As their names imply, these validation controls validate a single CheckBox (ensuring its either checked or unchecked, depending on a property setting) and ensures that a specified minimum number of options are checked from a CheckBoxList. For some reason, the built-in ASP.NET validation controls do not validate against CheckBoxes.
I recently updated the CheckBoxValidator control so that a page developer can optionally associate a Button, LinkButton, or ImageButton with the validator. In such a case, the CheckBoxValidator injects client-side script so that the associated button is disabled when the CheckBox is in the inappropriate check state, and enabled otherwise. The following screen shot illustrates this concept. On the left, the CheckBox is unchecked so the Submit button is grayed out; on the right, the CheckBox has been checked so the Button has become enabled.

You can read more about this enhancement at Disabling the Submit Button Until a CheckBox is Checked. The complete source code and a simple working demo is available here.

My Working with Data in ASP.NET 2.0 tutorials have been updated to include the four newest tutorials, which illustrate working with database data directly from an ASP.NET web page. The previous 46 tutorials (as well as all tutorials following these four) looked at working with data through a layered architecture. But for one-off projects or prototyping, it may be preferable to use a SqlDataSource and avoid building the architecture. These four new tutorials illustrate various facets of working with the SqlDataSource control:

Querying Data with the SqlDataSource Control [VB | C#]
Using Parameterized Queries with the SqlDataSource [VB | C#]
Inserting, Updating, and Deleting Data with the SqlDataSource [VB | C#]
Implementing Optimistic Concurrency with the SqlDataSource [VB | C#]
Like the previous tutorials in the series, all tutorials are available in C# and VB, include the complete code download as a self-extracting ZIP, and are available in PDF format. Also, the layout of the tutorial homepage has been revamped and a new style has been applied for the individual tutorials.
There are more tutorials to be released in the upcoming weeks, including tutorials on working with binary data (images, PDFs, etc.), caching, and much more!

There is now an RSS feed available for my Working with Data in ASP.NET 2.0 Tutorials series. There are currently 53 tutorials online at http://www.asp.net/Learn/DataAccess/ (as well as the first 13 available on the MSDN website), but there will be 75 in total.
What better way to be kept abreast of the latest tutorials than by subscribing to the RSS feed?   :-)http://www.asp.net/Learn/DataAccess/rss.ashx