Windows Azure Web Sites

INTRODUCTION TO WINDOWS AZURE WEB SITES

I'll make a quick observation on the past experiences of many web developers who tried to put a website on “the cloud” — it really wasn't very good. Most of us didn't know where to start, and even if you were very familiar with the steps, you needed a careful and calculated approach to configure and move your site into the sky. Missteps cost hours and there was little support or collective knowledge to help resolve issues.

Throw all that away. If you have been burned in a similar scenario, you can forget about those experiences; you are going to be pleasantly surprised with the offering of Windows Azure Web Sites. A point-and-click interface gives you the power to scale your site to support tens of thousands of users, with publishing simplified to the point of one-button deployment. You can wire different configurations and transformations into your website and automate the process of moving your application into staging and production environments with tools you likely already know.

The keen reader may have already noticed the spelling of “Web Sites” versus “website.” While “website” is the generally accepted spelling for the application that lives on the other end of a URL, the product name is officially “Windows Azure Web Sites.” Throughout the book, “Web Sites” or even WAWS refers to the product proper.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

The content of this book is well suited to developers using the .NET Framework to build web applications, to folks ...