Personalization Scope?

[William Raymond [MS Project MVP]]

Hi All,

I am not a programmer, but learning ASP.NET 2.0 to understand the
capabilities and potential limitations for my customers. This is my
disclaimer in case my terminology does not match up with what you would
expect me to be using

From what I can tell, you can Personalize ASP.NET web parts, page themes,
internationalization, etc. It also looks like there are two 'scopes' of
personalization, which are shared and personal, so I can create a 'shared'
layout and then let users (with the right security) personalize the website
I built for them.

Assuming this is correct, here is the actual question:

Imagine you are building a website that allows people to post interesting
information about themselves. Assuming no SharePoint, as a web developer,
you would probably create a web page called "MySite.aspx". Maybe you give
the user a pre-defined look for the website with an Image web part and a
BLOG web part. At this point, I think we are talking about a "Shared" scope
because it was already built for any new person that wants their own
personal area on your website.

The "MySite.aspx" could have any number of users that create their own
personal sites with their own BLOG and image library. Now, that user can
personalize the site based on privileges given to them such as the ability
to add/move/change web parts and tailor the overall look of their page
(themes, language, etc.)

Next, anonymous users visit my site... what do they see? The Shared scope
page or the one that the MySite user created for their personal home page?

Take this one step further... let's say I am an anonymous user and want to
modify one of the user's pages to just show what I want to see... I'm not
modifying that user's page, just personalizing it for me.

Does the .NET framework provide for all these layers of personalization
(out-of-box, many tailored views by people that can modify their information
for the world to see and then tailored views just for an individual viewer
to modify)?

If so, could you point me in the right direction to read about this? If
not, are there custom solutions in the marketplace that address this?

Thanks much and sorry about the long post.

-Bill

 

[William Raymond [MS Project MVP]]

Hi Vaish,

This was very helpful, thank you. Could you help me clarify the comments
you made to the last item (I pasted the paragraph and your response below)?

Basically, I want that 'extra' layer whereby you have the default ASPX view
but then let someone modify it via IE/web parts to have it's own look and
feel for others to see. That would be something like a personal 'my site'
for everyone to see. Then, users accessing this site could modify it via
IE/web parts for their own purposes.

This is sort of the equivelent of creating multiple SharePoint sites for
each user, but I just have one ASPX page that uses unique id's to show this
person's personal website.

If not available via the .NET framework, are their add-ons or special things
one can do to accomplish this?

Thanks,

-Bill (pasted text below)

No. A page has only four views -- Initial view (as defined in aspx),
Anonymous-User view (initially as defined in aspx, can be updated with
appropriate permissions), Individual-User view (User-Scope
personalization)
and Logged-In-Users-Common-View (Shared-Scope personalization).