In my drive to sort out my development processes there are a few things I want to do. Top of my list is proper automated testing and creating automatic documentation.

Doing these steps every time I compile my site (or application) will add a lot more steps, so I thought it would be better to learn how to automate the build process first.

I'd heard that NAnt was the tool I should be using, but I found it a little bit overwhelming.

NAnt is a program that follows a list of instructions in an XML file called a build file. These instructions are used to do a series of tasks like the following:

• Compile a site's ASP.NET code behind files
• Compile some unit tests
• Copy some files
• Run the unit tests
• Run a program to create documents

It took me a while to get my head round it, but I finally got a simple build file working. I found Jean-Paul Boodhoo's NAnt starter series very helpful.

Next I'm going to get the testing working and then automate it using NAnt.

At work my developers end up making a lot of contact and feedback forms for different parts of the organisation. Now we're about to upgrade to ASP.NET I wanted to make an elegant way to do this quickly.

I've created a control called emailMe. The content of any input fields inside it will get sent to the address specified in the control. It's not completely finished but this site now uses it for it's contact form.

I want to add an auto-responder option and make it tie in with my earlier ajax validation controls.

It's taken me a day, but making any new email contact forms will be very quick and easy.

I wanted a place to bring all my projects together and I also wanted to create a small web application in ASP.NET. So, I'm starting this blog using a blogging package I'm creating called gBlog. It would have been easier to use someone elses, but I wanted to learn something from doing this.

This blog will be about all my projects, plus other stuff I'm up to. Some of my projects are quite geeky and some are more arty. This brings them all together.

I'm also going to add some of my old projects that I'm pleased with. Anything you find listed before this post was added later really, but with the date when I did it.

I hope you enjoy reading about my projects, and get in touch if you're interested.