Improving performance of an ASP.Net site

Helpful summary with lots of good suggestions:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2246251/how-to-improve-asp-net-mvc-application-performance

Load balancing on EC2

http://blog.willbeattie.net/2010/09/load-balancing-with-amazon-ec2-and.html

roll your own web site admin tool asp.net

http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/052307-1.aspx

http://websitemanager.codeplex.com/
role your own membership provider
http://www.danharman.net/2011/06/23/asp-net-mvc-3-custom-membership-provider-with-repository-injection/

create user
http://weblogs.asp.net/nannettethacker/archive/2012/01/15/createuser-method-for-entity-framework-mvc3-razor-custom-member-provider-c-using-linq.aspx