ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming Problem - Design - Solution

8.4. Summary

In this chapter we've built a forums system from scratch, and we did it by leveraging much of the work done in earlier chapters, and many of the new features in ASP.NET 2.0. This was a further example showing how to integrate the built-in membership and profile systems into a custom module, as well as reusing other pages and controls (such as the RssReader control) developed previously. Our forums module supports multiple subforums, with optional moderation; it lists threads and replies through custom pagination (with different sorting options), offers support for publishing and consuming standard RSS feeds, and extends the user profiles with forum-specific properties. We also created administration features for deleting, editing, approving, moving, and closing threads and posts. This is a fairly complete forums module that should work well with many small to mid-size sites. However, the subject of user forums in general is a big area, and there are many possible options and features that you might want to consider adding to your forums module. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

• Add support for some open forums, as a subforum-level option, which would be accessible by anonymous posters.

• Allow some subforums to have different moderators for more granular security control (especially useful for larger sites that may have multiple moderators who specialize in certain subforums).

• Add e-mail notification of new forum activity, or you can even send out e-mail ...