We've covered the basic ideas behind ASP.NET. A lot of beginners and even experienced "old" ASP programmers get confused when they first try programming in ASP.NET because they try to learn both the programming and the architecture at the same time. We covered them before "getting to code" - Here are the links!
To get down to code, however, you need a host for the ASP.NET server ... such as Brinkster (recommended by Microsoft) or another hosting service that supports ASP.NET (they'll tell you on their services page). Unfortunately, hosting Visual Studio .NET is normally a premium service and the free accounts that are available, like Brinkster, don't make Visual Studio support part of the free service.
You can still create ASP.NET systems using free tools like Web Matrix, mentioned in Part 2, or even creating them as simple text files in Notepad. Fortunately, there's a better option available to you now (and one still better just on the horizon). That option is to use the IIS Web server (Internet Information Server) that is "in the box" with Windows (2000 and XP Pro).
