|
Welcome to my article ASP Installation Tutorial.
I have decided to write this one after the great success of my previous
article CGI installation
tutorial. Moreover We know there are number of free and low
cost ASP
scripts are available in the market which can make your site dynamic
and can hold your data on a database.
My aim in this article is to give the basic and necessary knowledge
on ASP script customization and basics on databases even for a non-programmer.
In the following chapters I will guide you learn through step by
step procedures, so that you can expertise yourself on the following
topics. By the time when you are ending up reading this, you must
be able to setup a Poll application or a Password authentication
system or a quiz or a a discussion forum or any other kind of application
with Back-end database support
I prerequisites
1.
Know thy Basics!
ASP is the web implementation and the subset
of VBScript
developed by Microsoft.
The scripts are used to make the HTML page dynamic and to connect
& send the data to the databases. ASP scripts are run at the
web server. The scripts can collect the data from the HTML forms
{link} and can send them to the databases to store them. ASP is
used to create dynamic, fast and interactive web sites. If you have
are running a small business your web site and if you want to give
some dynamism to your web site ASP is a good choice. Moreover you
can use the free ASP scripts, to fit into your budget. ASP is vary
easy to learn and ASP scripts not complicated to install.
2.
Environment you need
If you want to use ASP script, the basic
need that you should have is a Microsoft Environment. That is, You
need a Windows operating system. It can be any one of the following.
Windows 98, NT Workstation, me, windows 2000 Professional, Windows
CE, Windows NT Server or Windows 2000 server. If you are not in
windows Environment then you can not use ASP. There is an exception
which we can see in the chapter "ASP
for Non-Windows users" . Then the second need is a web
server.Web
server is an application tightly coupled with the Operating
system. Internet Information Server(IIS) is the mostly used Web
server for windows environment to run your ASP. A web server
usually interprets you script and do the necessary action on it,
and finally will send you the results to the web Browser. Here is
the table of Operating systems and the Web servers for them.
Read the other article in this site
which explains you everything about the web servers and compares
the available web servers.
| Windows
95,98,me,CE,NT Workstation |
Personal Web Server(PWS) |
| Windows NT Server |
Internet
Information Server 4.0(IIS) |
| Windows
2000 Pro, Windows 2000 Server, XP Professional |
Internet Information Server
5.0 (Internet Information Services) |
|
3.
Databases - Some Concepts
Databases
are storage containers(files), helps us to store and retrieve data
in specific format. Let us discuss this with an example. Through
HTML forms we can collect information from the visitor who fills
in and sending it, to our mail box or into a database. You can retrieve
the information collected and stored in the database later whenever
you want. ASP files are normally get and store data in MS Access
or MS SQL server databases. But we can use other Databases like
Oracle or mySQL also.
4.
Downloading and unzipping
Most
of the ASP scripts are coming in .Zip format, unzip them first and
store it under your site directory. For example if you install a
poll in your site and your site files are under D:\oursite then
create a folder poll under that directory and store the unzipped
file there.
5.
Preparing the web server
You can Install the scripts directly in
your hosting company web server or you can install in your machine
and test it first. If you want to test it in your local machine
prepare the web server first. Personal web server can be downloaded
from Microsoft's
web site and IIS 4.0 Can be installed from the Option Pack.
IIS 5.0 comes with its Operating systems by default. Just browse
http://localhost/ or http://your_computer_name/ or your IP
address, for example 192.163.0.1 is your http://192.163.0.1/ using
your web browser(IE or Netscape). You can see your computer's name
at Right mouse click on Mycomputer->Properties->Network Identification->Properties.
Now IIS/PWS will send the file default.asp of the default web site
to the Browser. If you want to know where this file is physically
located, You need to open IIS. IIS will be there under the administrative
tools, and you need to have the administrator privileges to open
IIS. This is not applicable for PWS.
Now you will get the Microsoft Management Consol(MMC) Panel (in
2000 it is called Internet Information Services)where you can see
the web site. Here we can setup the web sites. Remember you can
set only one site in PWS and IIS of Win 2000 Pro/NT workstation.
So you need to create Virtual directories to setup your site/application.
But in the case of windows NT or 200 server you can host multiple
web sites with multiple IPs.
If you just install the script in your remote
web server you do not have to do any preparations. Just FTP all
the files and so the following.
II Action steps
6. FTP - How to?
If you already know how to FTP then you can skip this section. FTP is file Transfer Protocol which is used to Transfer your Local Files into your remote Server. You can use FTP tools like WS_FTP or Cute FTP to upload files into your web server. Before FTPing your files you need to do the customization in the scripts. We will learn one by one in this article.
7. Setting up the Database
If your ASP application is a database driven then there will be a database file that comes along with the script. Let us assume yours' is a Poll script and you have a poll_database.mdb (MS access database file). Follow the steps to setup your Database first. |
|
1.
Create a folder on your server. The folder path could be like d:\site_db.
Pretty easy. Just create a folder called "site_db"
in your general D drive.
2. Place the database, poll_database.mdb in this folder. You don't
have to set up any special permissions on this folder.
3. Create a SYSTEM
DSN (a data source name that is specific to
the machine on which it resides). To do this, do these:
a:
START/SETTINGS/CONTROL PANEL
b: ODBC (maybe 32-Bit ODBC, depending on how your machine
named it)
c: Click on the tab marked SYSTEM DSN.
d: Click on ADD
e: Microsoft Access Driver, then FINISH
f: in Data Source Name(DSN) box, type 'poll'
g: Click the SELECT Button
h: Go to D:\site_db in the right window
i: Select Discussion.mdb in the left Window
j: You should see the filename next to "Database"
list the file D:\site_db\poll_database.mdb
k: Click OK
l: Now you should see poll_database in the list of sources
m: Click OK
n: You're done setting up the Data Source.
Remember,
If you are hosting your web site with a third party hosting server,
they will setup the DSN for you and you don't have to.
8.
DSN and DSN less Connection
DSN is Data Source Name. If the Application
you are installing needs a DSN then you have to setup as mentioned
in the above step. But how to find whether the script needs a DSN
or Not.
There are two ways.
ONE: If the script writer gives a readme.txt or install.txt
file along with the scripts, there should be a line mentioning about
the DSN and how to set it up. Otherwise you need to find it in a
hard-core way. First open the Global.asa file. Find if under the
Application_Onstart() event the DSN details are mentioned are not.
If they mentioned you can find some code like what I am giving below.
Set ObjConn = Server.createObject("ADODB.Connection")
strConn = "DSN=NWDSN;Database=Northwind;"
ObjConn.open strConn |
Replace the DSN and the Database in the second line with your DSN
and the database names. So it could be like,
strConn = "DSN=polldsn;Database=poll_database;"
TWO:If you are not able to find the line DSN anywhere then the
application connects with database as DSNless. Here all you need
to do is just change the database name as yours and leave the rest.
9.
Setting up the scripts and customizing
After doing all the above mentioned you are
ready to run the script now. Just open the default.asp (or the file
mentioned in the installation help file) from your web server. You
can right click on the file at IIS and browse it. Otherwise open
the file from the browser. You should type in the address bar, http://server_name/directory/default.asp
Replace the server_name with your server name and directory with
the virtual directory you created. If you are in Win NT or 2000
server you may need to browse with the IP and not with the server
name, like http://172.16.0.14/poll/default.asp
10.Using
Templates - getting the look and feel
If the script comes with a template
file you need open the file with a WYSIWAG editor like Dreamweaver
and you can change as you wish. But most of the free scripts do
not come with a template file, in that case you need to copy the
scripts in the appropriate places inside your HTML code. This needs
some experience with HTML and ASP. If you are no sure, you can approach
a professional to do this for you.
III Optional
11.COM
and dll Registration
COM is Component Object Model. COM
is a Microsoft technology which is used to provide an object oriented
approach. We can create COM using Visual Basic and the methods from
that components can be called from your ASP file. The main use of
COM is to protect your code and to reuse. Some of the free/paid
scripts comes with some VB ActiveX DLLs which has to be registered
in your machine. Let us see with the following step-by-step procedures.
Let us assume that you are installing a
Poll script which comes with a DLL called pollcom.dll
1.
Create a folder in your server folder called Poll.
Thus, the path will probably be
c:\InetPub\wwwroot\poll
2. Copy all of the .asp, .asp, and global.asa files
into this directory.
3. Copy pollcom.dll into the directory where you hold
all of your ASP DLL's. On a Win95 machine, this is in
C:\Program Files\WEBSVR\SYSTEM\ASP\Cmpnts. On an NT
it is probably somewhere like Winnt\system or
something.
4. Register the new DLL. To do this, open a command prompt.
CD into the directory where you just moved the pollcom
DLL, and type this:
regsvr32 pollcom.dll
Or Keep the dll in your desktop, and Right mouse click over the
file. Then Click Register pollcom.dll
5. A window will probably open letting you know it was
successfully registered. This step can be a bit tricky at
times, but it should go smoothly.
6. You should be ready to go now. Now open up a browser
and type the url,
http://yourserver/Poll
12.ASP
for Non-Windows users
ASP runs best on IIS with NT Server
/ Windows 2000, But there are some products available which allow
you to run ASP on other web servers (and even other platforms).
ChiliSoft
: Chilisoft has several ports for other platforms, including O'Reilly's,
Apache and Netscape on NT, and a couple even on UNIX.
Halcyon :
You can try halcyon also to run ASP.
NodeWorks : Nodeworks provides
a module to run ASP on Apache web server.
IV Help
13.Still
error Chasing?
I believe you can easily figure out
the problem if you know the error type and the steps you need to
take at that right time. But still there are plenty of chances that
you get errors even after your tiresome hours of work. You might
have started thinking now to go for some fresh air, outside. You
can do it and come back. Don't worry, most of the script authors
provide good support through their forum or by e-mail. As I said,
you are lucky if the author himself is ready to install it for you
or guide you. I personally feel that a lot of other people are so
helpful to offer their help through online discussion forums or
Microsoft's newsgroups. You can find some freelancers too, to help
you overcome the hurdles. Lots of doorways are there, so never freak
out.
As a service Macronimous.com is also doing ASP Installation for
any kind of websites. Read
out for complete details and price quote.
To read further:
1. Beginners
tutorials at ASP at learnasp.com by charles carroll
2. ASP
coding tips from 4guysfromrolla.com
3. Installing
personal web server from ASP101.com
4. Great faq on
ASPfaq.com by Aaron Bertran
|
