It's a well-known axiom in the world of programming: build the samples and they will come. ASP.NET is well suited for building online storefronts and communities, but a lack of easy-to-use, standardized samples has sometimes slowed adoption. To address this, Microsoft has just released a series of new ASP.NET application samples known as the ASP.NET Starter Kits. There are five individual kits designed to address specific needs for an organization, ranging in functionality from e-commerce storefronts to community portals. They include the Community Starter Kit, the Time Tracker Starter Kit, the Reports Starter Kit, the Commerce Starter Kit, and the Portal Starter Kit. Written in C#, Visual Basic .NET, and J#, the kits offer a set of common design patterns and provide valuable tools for developers creating ASP.NET Web sites.

The ASP.NET Community Starter Kit allows you to set up and configure a portal site, complete with discussion forums, photo albums, polling, content rating, and an automatically generated e-mail newsletter. User and role management features allow you to selectively grant access to content on your site. The Starter Kit makes integration with other sites easy by allowing you to selectively expose content as an XML-based Web Service which other sites can incorporate. The architecture of the Community Starter Kit was developed in such a way that is completely skinnable. Besides being a great example of how to separate code from content, this architecture makes it easy to customize the appearance of your site by creating your own Web skins.

The ASP.NET Time Tracker Starter Kit is built for any organization or team that works on a project basis. This Starter Kit allows team members to maintain a log of completed work as well as to log time spent on each project task (for example, on development or testing) through a Web interface. Using this data, project managers can then generate reports on the project, track overall progress, and analyze time allocations for individual projects.

ASP.NET Reports Starter Kit is a series of eight samples which demonstrate how to build various data reports using ASP.NET controls. The samples include master-details, visual, drill-down, cross-tab, hierarchical reports, and more. This kit allows you to create data-generated graphs, charts, sortable columns, and running totals.

The ASP.NET Commerce Starter Kit and the Portal Starter Kit are updated versions of the popular IBuySpy Store and Portal samples, respectively. Together they demonstrate how to build a Web storefront and simple portal application, including search functions, instant order services, shopping carts, and user account logon. The Commerce Kit offers everything you need to produce a catalog—room for product descriptions and photographs, ability to highlight popular items or "also bought" products.

The Portal Starter Kit helps you build a fully functional portal application with a dynamic infrastructure. It features 10 basic portal modules, role-based security, and mobile support using the ASP.NET mobile controls.

The ASP.NET Starter Kits are a valuable resource for both new and experienced ASP.NET developers. New developers can use Starter Kits to create Web sites without writing any code. Experienced developers can browse through the Starter Kit code and supporting whitepapers to understand the best practices for building ASP.NET applications.

Installation requirements include ASP.NET, SQL Server 2000 or Microsoft Data Engine version 7.0, and Windows 2000 or Windows XP. The ASP.NET Starter Kits are available for download at http://www.asp.net/starterkits.