ASP Introduction

Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server side scripting language that lets a webmaster transform the plain, static web site into a dazzling, dynamic solution. With Microsoft's server side scripting language you can gather data from your site's visitors, use sessions, cookies, application variables, and more. Don't worry if you don't know what all of those terms mean because you will soon be learning all about them.

Is ASP a Complete Solution?

While ASP is quite useful, it is not a stand alone solution. Rather, ASP is a supplement to HTML (and CSS and even Javascript) and your final ASP code will often contain bits of pieces of code that are not ASP. If you had ever wanted to take orders, gather emails, or make a decent guestbook, ASP will provide you the necessary tools to complete these tasks.

Meanwhile, for you to learn ASP, you are presumed to have known how to work with HTML (Hypertext Markup Language).

Installing ASP

ASP (Active Server Pages) is part of the Internet Information Server (IIS) package that comes with certain Microsoft operating systems. Currently there is no native support for ASP on the other operating systems, such as: Mac OS, Linux, and Unix. The operating systems that do have the ability to support ASP are: Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, 2003, XP Pro.

You will notice that XP Home Edition was not on the list of operating systems, and this was done intentionally by Microsoft to encourage people to purchase the more expensive XP Professional Edition. This lesson will provide an installation walkthrough for Windows 98 and Windows XP Pro.

Note: Chilisoft does have a solution for some Linux and Solaris users and can be purchased at Sun's web site: Sun Java System Active Server Pages 4.0.

Installing ASP and IIS on Windows XP Professional

First locate your XP Professional CD and put it into your CD-ROM then follow these steps:

• Open your control panel. Click Start -> then Settings -> then Control Panel
• Select and Open "Add or Remove Programs"
• On the left column of the popup window select "Add or Remove Windows Components"
• Scroll down until you see Internet Information Services (IIS)
• If IIS is not checked then check it, otherwise you already have IIS installed on your computer
• Click Next and follow the on screen instructions from the installer
• When it has completed, open up Internet Explorer and type in http://localhost
• If IIS was install appropriately you should be taken to the welcome screen http://localhost/localstart.asp