11.12.07
Running ASP Scripts on your Computer
ASP is the Microsoft version of PHP and indeed can be a very useful language to use in your coding, especially if you happen to be a big fan of Microsoft FrontPage. However, you can not just go ahead and use ASP right away without making some medications to your computer, unless you own an external server that you can use. If you are like most people, an external server is not particularly high on your priority purchase list and therefore you need to use a Personal Web Server (PWS) on your computer in order to take the place of the normal server that other people would use.
The PWS is a product that is made by Microsoft and it is specifically for people that are interested in running ASP scripts on their computer without having to invest in a server in order to do so. Installing the PWS requires at least Windows 98, Second Edition, if you are truly serious about learning ASP and preferably if you had something even more recent than that such as Windows 2000 then the situation would be much better. If PWS is not a good choice for you, then you can also look into IIS (Internet Information Services) as an independent choice for you to install on your computer that is capable of running ASP scripts.
Installation of PWS is different depending on the system that you have in place. PWS is not shipped with any copies of Windows 95, so if you have that operating system then you need to download the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack in order to get the PWS that you need to install on your computer. Once you have those downloaded (in all other cases you get the PWS files already shipped), then you can go ahead and follow the installation instructions that come with it in order to get the server set up on your computer. The same is also true for IIS.
Once you have the server installed, try running the following code in the local directory:
<html>
<body>
<%
Response.write(“Hello World”)
%>
</body>
</html>
If you get the following:
Hello World
On the screen, then it means ASP is working fine. If you get nothing in the screen, then you have done something wrong within the installation procedure. Go back and look at what you have done to see if there is a part of the installation procedure that you failed to observe.
Scriptycan is a great software repository featuring both free and commercial ASP scripts and applications for developers and programmers.