Lesson 2: Servers
ASP is a server-side technology. Therefore, you need to have a server to run ASP. But it doesn't need to cost you anything to make this upgrade and there are several options for doing so.
Since you ultimately only need to choose one option this lesson is divided into different parts. First comes a little introduction on the different options (just choose the one that suits you best). When your server is up and running, we'll pick up with Lesson 3 to make your first ASP page.
- If you use Windows 7
- Windows 7 includes Internet Information Server 7.5 (IIS) and can therefore run ASP.
Learn how to install IIS on Windows 7 - If you use Windows XP Professional
- Windows XP Professional includes Internet Information Server 5.1 (IIS) and can therefore run ASP.
Learn how to install IIS on Windows XP Professional - If you use Windows XP Home Edition
- Internet Information Server (IIS) is not included in this edition of Windows XP. However, according to this Usenet post it is possible to install IIS on Windows XP Home Edition. You may want to try this approach. But we recommend you use Windows 7 or Windows XP Professional instead.
- If you use Linux
- It is possible to run ASP on Linux, but we recommend that you use PHP on Linux instead. With PHP you can do pretty much the same as ASP. See our PHP tutorial.
- If you use Macintosch
- We know of no option for running ASP on a Macintosh.
- If you have a website on a hosted server
- You can choose to have a website on hosted server which run ASP (like AspHost4Free (free host)), then you are ready to go and can just ftp your ASP pages to the server.