Best practice in SP2013 for simple ASP.NET functionality?

Question

Disclaimer: I am not a Sharepoint developer, but I know my way around ASP.NET fairly well.

I have inherited a simple ASP.NET web forms page (one .ASPX and a code-behind) in our current Sharepoint environment (2003, I think...very old). It doesn't interact with Sharepoint itself at all, only making some simple queries against our AD domain (using System.DirectoryServices) and some third-party web service calls. It needs to use the site master page, though.

In its current version, it is an "application page", deployed in Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS. Apparently, that was the path of least resistance at the time.

My question is whether this is still the recommended approach in 2013, or is there a better/simpler way to do this? If an application page is still the best way, is there a start-to-finish tutorial that walks you through building and deploying a page in 2013?

Answer 1

Its fairly easy Matt. The only change done for application pages is that the Sharepoint hive folder has been changes with version and are as:

Moss 2007/Wss 3.0 12 hive folder SP2010 14 hive folder SP2013 15 hive folder.

Means Sharepoint recommends to deploy the packages in respective folders with version.

You could follow the links below:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kaevans/archive/2010/06/28/creating-a-sharepoint-site-page-with-code-behind-using-visual-studio-2010.aspx

http://allaboutsharepoint2010.blogspot.in/2009/12/sharepoint-2010-improvements-in.html http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee231581.aspx