A website is simply a repository of related files and subdirectories. Websites typically contain files of the following types:
This list of file types enumerates the most commonly found file types on a web server but is hardly exhaustive. A rock band's website, for example, might also have MP3 files available for download. Additionally, numerous ASP.NET-specific files can optionally be added to your website to provide various types of functionality. We'll be learning about many of these different ASP.NET-specific file types throughout this book. Adding Content to Your WebsiteWhen you create a new website using the ASP.NET Web Site template, the new website has the web.config file along with a single ASP.NET page, Default.aspx (which is really composed of two files, Default.aspx and Default.aspx.vb). You can easily add additional files and folders through the Solution Explorer. From the Solution Explorer, start by right-clicking on the website name; this will bring up the context menu shown in Figure 3.3. Figure 3.3. To add a new file or folder, right-click on the website name in the Solution Explorer.
To add a new folder to your website, select the New Folder item from the context menu. To add a new file, choose Add New Item. Selecting Add New Item will display the Add New Item dialog box (see Figure 3.4). The Add New Item dialog box lists the wide variety of types of files that can be added. Notice that there are file types for each of the popular file types enumerated earlier, in addition to many other types. Figure 3.4. The Add New Item dialog box allows you to choose the type of file to add.
At the bottom of the Add New Item dialog box, you'll find a series of options. The options displayed depend on what file type you have decided to add. For Web Forms, which are the item type name for ASP.NET pages, there are four options:
The Language drop-down list value for the ASP.NET page's source code portion will be the same language choice you specified when creating the website. However, a single ASP.NET website can have web pages that use different programming languages for their source code portions. However, I recommend against this approach and encourage you to stick with a single, unified programming language choice across all ASP.NET pages for a given website. Although ASP.NET pages will work just as well if their source code portion is in the .aspx page in a server-side <script> block or if it is relegated to a separate file (PageName.aspx.vb), keep in mind that all of the examples we'll be working through in this book use the separate page model. Therefore, when adding a new ASP.NET page to your website, be sure to check the Place Source Code in a Separate File check box. Doing so will create both the PageName.aspx and PageName.aspx.vb files.
Let's practice adding a new ASP.NET page to our website. Imagine that in addition to Default.aspx, we also want to have a second ASP.NET page, DisplayTime.aspx. To add this page to your website, perform the following steps:
You can follow these same steps to add other types of resources to your website. Of course, the options present in step 4 will differ depending on the type of item being added. Adding Existing ContentAlong with adding new content to your website, you can use Visual Web Developer to easily add existing content. You may already have an image file on your hard drive or an ASP.NET page from another project that you want to include in this project as well. If that's the case, you can add an existing item by right-clicking on the website name in the Solution Explorer and choosing Add Existing Item. Choosing this option will display the standard file browsing dialog box. From here, you can navigate to the folder on your hard drive that contains the content you want to add, select it, and click the Add button. This will copy over the selected item to your website's directory, making it part of your website now. Moving, Renaming, and Deleting ContentAlong with adding new folders and files, from the Solution Explorer you can also move and delete content. To move content among the folders in your website, simply drag the file or folder from its existing location to a new file or folder. To rename or delete a file or folder, start by right-clicking on the item in the Solution Explorer. This will bring up the context menu shown in Figure 3.5. As you can see from the figure, Rename and Delete menu items are available. Simply click on the appropriate menu item to rename or remove the selected file or folder. Figure 3.5. Select the appropriate menu item from the context menu.
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