Chapter 12. Personalization

One of the hallmarks of a professional web site is the ability for users to personalize the site to their individual needs. Personalization means that the site remembers the user and the user's preferences, profile information, and so forth.

In addition to allowing users to personalize your site, you may want to limit their access based on their identity. To accomplish this, you may want your users to "log in." While you can use Windows security on an intranet, the harder task has always been to create a complete authentication and authorization system for Internet applications where you can't know in advance who will be logging in. This is called forms-based security , and Visual Basic 2005 makes it a snap, with a ready-to-go set of controls and a complete database for managing both your users login information and their preferences.