In this website, we have limited ourselves to technologies and sites that are free to use. Even a technology as powerful as ASP.NET can be used for free. Here, we’ll quickly outline how you can get started with ASP.NET.

In terms of software, the only software you will need to begin exploring ASP.NET is the .NET SDK (Software Development Kit), available for free and a simple text editor such as Notepad. After you install this SDK, you can write ASP.NET applications in the text editor and test them on your computer. The SDK only runs on Windows computers and servers.

Tags in ASP.NET are a little different than in HTML. Most tags begin with the prefix “asp:” and all tags contain an attribute that reads “runat=“server”” so that the server knows to change them to normal HTML. For example, a bare-bones, empty ASP.NET textboxes can be created with the following code in an .aspx file:

<asp:textbox runat=“server” />

Most textboxes are of course more complex, with more attributes for identification and functionality. ASP.NET is not a computer language, but rather is part of a broader framework called .NET and created by Microsoft. Essentially, this technology is called a framework because it allows you to perform a lot of common simple and complex tasks, online and offline, in a language of your choice. Thus, to harness the power of ASP.NET, you’ll need to learn a computer language such as C# or Visual Basic. There are many books and websites written on these languages, should you decide to pursue them.

Most, people, however, do not use Notepad or WordPad to write their applications. They use a more fully-featured type of program called an IDE (for Integrated Development Environment). The most common free tool for this is Visual Studio Web Developer Express, which contains some nice features that make learning and programming easier.

Lastly, note that ASP.NET is a server-side technology. This means that runs on the web server that is hosting the website. The SDK will be enough for you to run ASP.NET websites on your computer, but if you want to publish an ASP.NET website to the web for widespread use, you’ll need to use an ASP.NET web host. Most web hosts clearly state whether or not they support ASP.NET.