Asp

ASP or Active Server Pages is MicroSoft's programming language to compete with PHP/JSP/SSI, et cetera. It allows for dynamic pages, and programming within a page to communicate to a database.

It has, I believe, been ported to other server types, but works best on a MicroSoft Server (IIS, NT).

It's syntax leans toward VBScript/VB, but shares similarities in function with all scripting languages like PHP, JSP and SSI.

Suzanne

Thanks Suzanne. I just found some info on it but should someone like myself, who only knows html, attempt to re-do an asp web site with html? Or should I pass on this one. It just seems that it would be way more advanced than what I know. But the site really looks like crap.

Any old asp'ers out there? What would you recommend I do? This question may be to vague for an answer. I would like some input though.

.... to take something already made more efficient with server-side processing and pull it backwards to static html.

I'm not saying you should pass, but you might want to work in conjunction with someone who knows ASP instead of undoing the work.

Suzanne

I guess that it depends on what type of site it is. How many pages is the site serving up? Are they doing any kind of e-commerce? Are the pages fairly static or do they change on a regular basis?

i doubt theres a need to pass up a potential client. i sugest that you redo the website html etc. and get someone else to integrate it with the asp code.

It is fairly static I guess by looking at it. It has about 10 pages total. Two e mail forms, javascript that rotates two images and a login page that goes to a list of their clients, and two flash pages that let you view their product. The rest are just text and jpgs.

You can easily move the forms to cgi or php forms, but they will have to be scripted (or processed).

It's hard to tell what ASP programming is done by looking at it:

livingartsphotogallery.com -- can you tell what parts are SSI? It looks static, but it isn't in the least. The header, footer, navigation and content are all controlled by SSI, only the gallery pages are through the cgi-bin.

Once it's compiled/processed and you're viewing it through a browser, you can't see necessarily what's going on. I have heavily commented the bits, so you can see where each piece is broken out. This is for me and for my client, normally there are no comments like this.

I do think you should give it a shot, but get someone who knows ASP to look over the raw files (on the server, not what you see through a browser) first to make sure you can duplicate things without undoing work that's already been done.

Suzanne

Now that I have read up on ASP a little I do understand what you are saying Suzanne. You explained that well. This will require some thought before I decide to tackle this job or not. I was asked to redo the site and said, "sure, I'll do it" before looking at it........LESSON LEARNED!!!!

If you have ANY programming eperience, buy a beginner's ASP book and start from there. You can't hurt yourself buy learning something new... since they are already using ASP, you can assume it is hosted on a server that supports it (probably NT/2000). I personally do all of my clients sites in ASP, and have a huge library of in house scripts to support them... You can use Javascript, VBScript, and Perl script inside an ASP page, you just have to define the programming language like

. There are many advantages to using Microsoft technologies, I'd of course recommend everyone to give it a try.

ASP by itself is really just a file extension given to a txt/html file, but the extension tells the server to parse the file for any server-side code... the same goes for php, cfm, jhtml, etc. They all use different programming languages, but in the end, all they are doing is writing basic HTML to the client(browser).

Here's a really simple example of an ASP page:

The variable named something contains:

Just like html, but you can also make a truely dynamic site.
In fact you could take out all of the ASP code, and just use HTML... just because the file extension says "asp" doesn't mean there is necessarily any server side code.

But just think of the possibilities...

You can also include files, like a header, or footer, that appears on every page, like this:

...

Get a book, or check out some ASP sites with code examples... if you are running PWS (personal web server) that comes with WIN98 + , you can test your asp scripts on your pc.

Check out:
aspin.com
4guysfromrolla.com
learnasp.com

there are many more... you can go as far as design a Buliten Board Service like this one, to a basic, run of the mill geocities homepage. Up to you and your imagination.

-pb

What an informative and nice post pbaugher. Thanks.

If I as using Windows 98 can I use asp or does that matter?

DM

If you have PWS installed you can use ASP on windows 95/98/2000 ... 95 does not come with it but you can download it from Microsoft. 98 has it on the CD, and might have been installed by default, but if not, go to control panel, add/remove programs, add remove windows components, under something like internet tools (I can't check exactly, I'm using 2000/IIS).
There's also a lot of info as you might expect at Microsoft's site:
http://msdn.microsoft.com

If you need exact instructions on how to install and use PWS, just do a net search... I'm sure you'll find a lot of info on it.

Once pws is installed you'll access the server by:
http://127.0.0.1 -or-
http://localhost -or-
http://your-computer's-network-name-here

Active Server Pages use a set of objects to make server side processing easy. Since it is a Microsoft product most people think in terms of inplementating them with Visual Basic Scripts but actually Javascript and Perl can be used just as well.

VBScripts is what I use because I have long experience with basic. Since it represents such a larg share of the market any developer should get more knowledgable in ASP even it is means only using Javascripts on the server side.

asp code integrates scripting code like vb script or javascript with plain old html.

The html written in an asp page gets sent as is to the browser.

The two elements can be intertangled so much that you can't figure out how to change the html output without understanding what the scripting code is doing.

But asp pages can be written in such a way that the html code is visible as seperate coding segments in the page or in include pages.

If the later is the case, you could redesign the site by editing the html code and leave the form processing (and obvioulsy the form processing relevant elements in the html) and whatever else the site is doing with asp as it is.

Thanks akohl but I declined to do this site. They wanted it done in one week and I knew that I wouldn't be able to meet this deadline. Especially with it being is ASP. It has been a month since I declined and they still have the old site up. Guess they couldn't find anyone else to do it in that time frame either.