The .NET eco-system is a great place to begin your personal ventures: Part 1 — Web frameworks and hosting

I recently started to build an application that I have
wanted for a long time (www.mylifelessons.net).
It is built and hosted using facilities provided by the .NET eco-system, which
I have found to be brilliant for rapid development — with almost no initial
cost

My application might not be used by anyone other than myself,
but my experience shows that all you need is effort and motivation to get your
ideas up and running so you can gauge user feedback. The .NET eco-system has
the rest well taken care of.

This series of posts will contain:

Part 1 — Web frameworks and hosting — FubuMVC and Windows
Azure

Part 2 — Fast and free persistence with RavenDb/RavenHQ

Part 3 — Easy styling with Twitter Bootstrap

Part 4 — Background jobs with Azure worker roles

Web frameworks and Hosting

To create an online application you need at least two
components — the tools to build it, and then somewhere to host it. In this post
I’ll show you how I did this for www.mylifelessons.net
using FubuMVC and Windows Azure all the way to a live environment with no costs
involved.

Once you’ve read this, go and do it yourself — create a .NET
application, and get it up and running on the net for free. There’s a “recipe” at the bottom.

Choose your framework

There are a fair few web frameworks in the .NET eco-system -
from Microsoft’s offerings to OSS alternatives like Service Stack and Open
Rasta. All of these frameworks have their fan boys, which is a good thing — it shows
people really like them.

I’ll Take Fubu

I personally love FubuMVC
and chose to use it for www.mylifelessons.net.
I’ve used FubuMVC before, but I made the decision based on the following:

·
Conventions
– I can set up my application exactly how I want it

·
Modularity
– I can inject or replace tiny parts of the framework — not entire object
graphs

·
Clean
code — Whenever I need to step into the framework it’s a learning
experience to work with the code

You might have a difference preference to me, and that’s
great. It proves that .NET is a great
place for your “startup”.

Hosting with Windows Azure

I signed up with Windows Azure and got 10 free websites
which was brilliant. But even better is that I can publish with git. My
deployment process is thus: “git push azure”. Unbelievably brilliant and 0 cost
(to start with).

When configuring, deploying or interacting with your hosting
environment in any way, Windows Azure is really easy to use. On top of that,
the styling is pleasant and a pleasure to work with.

You also get some stats for free with Azure, a history of
deployments, and an interface that makes scaling out trivial. All this out of the box.

So far I am 10/10 impressed with Windows Azure. I’m mindful of long-term costs, but that’s not a concern yet.

Recipe

1. Choose a web framework — your favourite, or try
   something new (give fubu a shot)
2. Create a simple application with it — just a walking
   skeleton for now
3. Create a local git repository for your app
4. Sign up to windows azure and create a free website
5. Set up git publishing and make a note of the repository URL
6. Push your application to the git url