WebMatrix is a free tool that makes it extremely easy to create, configure and publish your web sites , web applications, blogs etc.  It can be trusted upon Microsoft’s in depth knowledge of web platforms,programming tools,  frameworks. It is surfaced in a more approachable and very straightforward way. 


As for ASP.NET WebMatrix comes with everything you need to get started building websites and web applications:

• A complete and integrated development environment, with a small download and a simple install. 

• You get a database engine (SQL Server Compact Edition) to handle your data. All the structures you create in this database engine will be compatible with professional versions of SQL Server.

• WebMatrix supports a Web Server (IIS Express) to serve all your web pages. This web server is compatible with the professional versions of IIS as well.

Different people create different websites.
Their types are

First, there’s a group of people that like to use the large number of rich web applications out there as a starting point, and then add some specific functionality. They need a quick and easy way to customize and publish their solutions. Many of these web applications are tailored for specific tasks like Content Management Systems or eCommerce websites.  These developers will often repeat this process many times for each customer, their goal is to make the process of acquiring the application, customization and publishing it as quick as possible.
A second group need to create web apps from scratch. These developers are hobbyists, beginners and people who need a tool that is easy to learn and that allows them to focus on the application functionality instead of developers’ details.
Finally, the group of professional developers. They need a powerful tool, full of features and able to work in team, perhaps distributed ones. They will use a source and version control and will need a testing framework to write their own unit tests. This tool needs to support the addition of 3rd party powerful extensions.

WebMatrix is built for those developers that like to start from scratch or by building from a 3rd party web applications. 


When you create a new website from scratch in WebMatrix, you will be using the new Razor syntax.

It’s very compact and easy to read and write, and allows you to flow between code and markup seamlessly.  You can write your code in languages such as C# or VB, and it’s extensible via Helpers.


(WebMatrix Helpers help you add common functionality to your Web site. They can be used to solve a specific web site tasks. You can think of them as bricks that are used/reused and interconnected to build a site. Nothing stops you from creating a helper and reusing it on different pages of your site, or even in different sites. And you can use helpers created by others. )

 Razor is designed to be concise and easy to use. When we think about the way developers use a language we take into account the context switching they have to do and also the number of keystrokes. The way that Razor allows you to transition seamlessly between markup and code makes for a much more natural and fluent style and also helps to reduce the number of keystrokes and context switching that a developer has to do, thinking about markup and code separately.  With Razor, markup and code are really the same thing.


it’s the easiest way to code websites and when you compare it to the other languages out there


The database that comes with WebMatrix is SQL Compact Edition, or SQL CE for short.
It’s free, lightweight and doesn’t require a separate server to run – which makes it much easier to get setup and running than traditional versions of SQL Server like SQL Server Express.
SQL Compact Edition includes tools to manage your tables and data and because it’s file-based, you simply need to copy the database files to transport your database to another machine.  This is really useful if you are sharing a database with another developer.

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