Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5

Chapter 2. Architecting the Web Portal and Widgets

Because it strives to deliver its functionality on a single page, an Ajax web portal that lives up to its promise is invariably a masterpiece of Ajax technology. It is a great architectural challenge to provide so much on one page without compromising the performance of either the server or client. Some of the unique challenges seen only in web portals include incorporating many features into one web application and aggregating content from every kind of web site.

This chapter explains the architecture of the Dropthings portal, which you can also use to design one of your own. We’ll examine a number of architectural challenges, including how to run many widgets on one page, load a web portal quickly, and deal with security threats such as denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, attempts to compromise user data, and more.

The heart of any web portal is its support for widgets, which is the mechanism by which users can customize their start pages and the means by which providers can make their services available, whether a department inside a company or a third-party, like Reuters.

In an ASP.NET implementation like the one we use in this book, Default.aspx is the homepage that displays the widgets and allows them to be added, removed, moved, customized, and run within the page without ever causing a page refresh or postback.

The application remembers a user’s actions and customizations so that on her next visit she sees the exact same widgets ...