One of my task last week was to send mass email to customers using web forms. And this was the first time I will create this type of project: The Email System of ASP.NET 2.0. And because of large information around the web, it didn't took me too long hours to finish it, it just need some tweaks. So I want it to publish it under my blog for others to see, and also to learn if there are other way to do this. Take note, I tried to create my own email address, and it works! Wonderful, however, you cannot reply to the email address I've created, it will return a daemon error / failure notice . I wonder this is the way the spammers use to send spams. They will just include their real email address in the body of the message. Cool isn't it?
Under your webconfig file, add additional nodes:
<system.net>
<
mailSettings><smtp><network host="SMTP.BIZMAIL.YAHOO.COM" userName="wdavid@gurango.com" password="******" />
</
smtp></mailSettings>
</
system.net>
<----------Business logic here ---------------------->
//Code starts here, we access the webconfig here
System.Configuration.
Configuration myConfig = System.Web.Configuration.WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration(HttpContext.Current.Request.ApplicationPath);System.Net.Configuration.MailSettingsSectionGroup mySettings = ((System.Net.Configuration.MailSettingsSectionGroup)myConfig.GetSectionGroup("system.net/mailSettings"));
//Obtain credentials from web.config file under mailsettings node
System.Net.NetworkCredential myCredential = new System.Net.NetworkCredential(mySettings.Smtp.Network.UserName, mySettings.Smtp.Network.Password);
//Create an SMTP client here, can be found on account settings in outlookSystem.Net.Mail.SmtpClient myClient = new System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient();
myClient.Host = mySettings.Smtp.Network.Host;
myClient.Credentials = myCredential;
//Build email message here:
//MailMessage myEmail = new MailMessage();System.Net.Mail.MailMessage myEmail=new System.Net.Mail.MailMessage();
myEmail.From =
new System.Net.Mail.MailAddress("willydavidjr@david.com");myEmail.To.Add("willydavidjr@yahoo.com");
myEmail.Subject =
"Test Mail";myEmail.IsBodyHtml = true;
myEmail.DeliveryNotificationOptions = System.Net.Mail.
DeliveryNotificationOptions.OnFailure;myEmail.Body = "<strong>Hello World!</strong>";
myClient.Send(myEmail);
Cool? What do you think guys? Or am I just a newbie here? 
It was a cool but tiring week for me last week. Our sites, modules, and our API were ready for RTM so I was assigned for creating an installer. I never tried the click once deployment and even creating an installer for instance. And I was assigned to create it for deployment, so we used InstallShield as our main framework for creating it. At first, my first impression was Wow! It was pretty cool but pretty tough. It was like creating a program using structure programming language which I was not familiar anymore. But as I go with the program and orientation, it was a pretty cool task. Although I really need to review and research a lot of things like how can you specify on the installer the inputs that will be made by the user and use those inputs for creating a file for connections strings on your XML file and other config file. You also need to use those inputs to check if a database exists and check for username and password. Indeed it was pretty tough but learning from new programs like these was a great experience. It was like shifting from OOP to Structure then back to OOP again. The experience was there and the attitude towards work gives me an improvement not to give up if there where cases that seems impossible. I think I was learning the hard but cool way.
How about you? What installer do you use? I think I can create an installer too using VS 2005 because some other teams in my workplace do use VS 2005 for creating an installer and an API for code reuse.
- Willy David Jr