Site Server 3.0 Personalization and Membership [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Robert Howard (Author)

Book Description

Series: Programmer to Programmer | Publication Date: November 1, 1998

This book focuses on the Personalization and Membership capabilities of Site Server 3.0, which enable you to do clever things like this: ISP - Use Personalization and Membership to personalize IIS administrative tool using the existing IIS web administration interface, to allow different members to have different administrative privileges; also, to implement user membership on various levels to provide simple display and access privileges as well as integrating with existing applications. Interactive Web Site - Use Personalization and Membership to control the display of the content on a site, thus giving end-users a richer browsing experience. This example theme demonstrates how to incorporate lightweight samples and ideas into their existing web site. Intranet - Use Personalization and Membership in an Intranet site to control access to items on the network. This would be a higher end example of the type of things that Personalization and Membership can do.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Site Server 3.0 Personalization and Membership is a worthy guide to personalizing content on your Web site using the latest Microsoft technologies.

Early chapters detail the Lightweight Directory Services Protocol (LDAP), which is the real foundation of membership in Site Server. Active Server Pages (ASP)-based scripts--and even C++ programs--can make use of membership objects using the Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI). The author does a good job of explaining how to install Site Server and related tools, including the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-ins that allow administrators to add membership to Web sites.

Once a Web site can determine who a user is, the guide teaches you how to make use of Active User Objects (AUO) so that you can program ASP to tailor content to individual users. The latter half of this text presents examples for identifying users and personalizing start-up pages for users. Advanced topics include security issues and how to use AUO to simplify administration in Visual Basic and C++. Appendices include a sample working online investment Web site that makes heavy use of personalization, as well as a guide to the ADSI APIs for use in your own programming.

With its detailed technical presentation of Site Server technologies, Site Server 3.0 Personalization and Membership is a must for any Internet Information Server (IIS) administrator or Web developer considering the options for delivering personalized content using Microsoft technologies. --Richard Dragan

From the Publisher

The intended audience for this book is three-fold. First, program managers and product managers who are interested in furthering their web endeavors and using all of the available tools and resources that Microsoft provides. Planning is a key element in any large-scale Internet or Intranet development effort, so at least a fourth of the book will be devoted to planning, machine requirements, and development time frames. Second, the book will be heavily weighted towards using the Personalization and Membership features of Site Server 3.0 and will appeal directly to developers and consultants who have to implement and solve real-world problems with Site Server. Third, the book will provide readers with real-world examples that they can apply to their own current problems.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 612 pages
• Publisher: Wrox Press; 1st edition (November 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861001940
• ISBN-13: 978-1861001948
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,002,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Demistifying Tome of Site Server P&M 3.0 - Saved My Bacon, October 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Site Server 3.0 Personalization and Membership (Paperback)

As a P&M beginner, I circled around most of the documentation that is available on-line for P&M and I was thoroughly confused as to how to learn the product. I was integrating P&M into an existing website, and needed a "bible" of P&M. Though this book does lack a few things, it explains security quite well (missing a few points, but good) and it offers many different ways to tackle P&M in your website. I like the availability of source code, and I like the configuration section and especially the scalability section with SQL Server. It covered most aspects of the AUO and the Membership Authentication methods. On a wish list sort of thing, I would have liked a more technical and mechanical overview of the software (services, etc.) with a troubleshooting section in this book. There were a couple of things that were left out in terms of Automatic Cookie Authentication that you wouldn't have learned by reading this book (newsgroups helped out). With patience though, the book is by far the best in it's field to date.

I no longer fear this product. I respect it.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book to comprehend Personalization & Membership, May 30, 2000

By 

Martin Herman (Lyndhurst, New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Site Server 3.0 Personalization and Membership (Paperback)

I have read 4 Wrox books on Site Server (Beginning, P&M, Professional and Commerce Edition). This book is definitely the best book out of the above 4 that addresses the P&M architecture is some detail. Items that I find in P&M (e.g., IPDeny, DenyAccount, KEkey) are not even mentioned in other books. Therefore, for directory & file system security, I would have missed this section (unless I read it in another non-Wrox book).

The layout of this book is excellent & it gives loads of examples to explain P&M in detail. (Source code can be downloaded from Wrox so that you can experiment with the examples within the book).

My only complaint was that the Wall Street Investing example (located in the Appendix of P&M) finally worked when:

1. I did NOT register the WSI.dll (For some reason: I was not able to pull content from SQL-Server 7.0 unless it wasn't registered)

2. You MUST migrate [content] data from Access --> SQL-Server. (According to the book--"..You can of course migrate your data from Access to SQL Server at a later stage, but this is an added complication!" Unfortunately, this statement implied to me to create a Db within SQL-Server. However, it did not clearly address using SQL's Data Transformation Services to copy data from Access --> SQL-Server (in order to populate the appropriate tables)

3. Because the book was published in 1998, all SQL-Server screen-shot examples are in 6.5

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars *REALLY* great Site Server app development book, February 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Site Server 3.0 Personalization and Membership (Paperback)

The level of useful detail in this book is just amazing. From simple setup info to get you started, API discussions and performance considerations to common sense learned through experience, etc., it's there. "It" is also scattered about the MS white papers and product documentation, but this book nicely collects all the interesting stuff into a single volume. I'd put it up with the NT Services book, as one of the best Wrox books for programmers doing server applications on MS platforms. (BTW, if you're one of these, you might also like Nik Okunsteff's NT 4.0 Security and Exchange programming books). Programming examples are in VB and C/C++; one or two might be in Java. So, the more widely-versed you are in languages/environments and the more you have worked on Web-based applications, the more you're going to get out of this book, although it contains rather intro-level coverage of app-building Wizards and the like, as well.

I _read_ all the MS white papers and product docs while developing a prototype app soon after Site Server 3.0's release; it would have saved me a lot of time if this book had been available a couple months earlier. Reading it, I said, "Yep, I found out THAT's important, and it's only mentioned in one obscure MS white paper," and "Wish someone had told me THAT before I spent a day trying to do it this other way that sounded good," etc. It just contains that much stuff that is useful In Real Life, rather than merely satisfying academic curiosity (do YOU have time for that any more?).

It even goes a bit into Site Server administration (You're a developer, so you don't need that? Guess again; Site Server 3.0 can be a challenge to even install, depending on what else is on your machine, and if you can't install Site Server, or your company's admin can't install it on their production server, your app isn't going to get far...).

Doing an app in a Site Server environment? Or thinking of doing an app requiring visitor personalization services, and considering using Site Server? Buy this book. (And no, I am not related in any way to any of the zillion authors. This is an unbiased programmer-to-programmer recommendation.)