Setting up a Windows/ASP based server

Greg K's picture

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

Hi, does anyone know of a good tutorial for setting up a windows server for learning IIS and ASP?

We have MSDN Universal subscription here from a couple of years ago, so I do have Windows 2000 Server OS to isntall, MS SQL, and pretty much anything I need.

This is for my own internal learning, most likely not going to be hooked up to the net, so setting secutiry is low priority on the server setup (however, I still plan on learning secure coding)

I've played with ASP before a little bit, I know Visual Basic 6 like the back of my hand. Even if I don't change jobs, would be nice to know it to be able to help out others here even more.

I need to know things like, what is needed to get this so I can learn ASP.NET and the more "modern" things on the ASP side. I've spent the past few years concentrating on PHP, and well in my area, most of the web jobs are for ASP... Time to sharpen my skills.

Alternitavely, I'd be willing to pay hosting at someplace if need be, but have no idea what to look for in shopping for that.

I did back around 2000/2001, install Windows 2000 Server on a spare computer at the university. I did this on a friday. Did ALL the critical update from microsoft. By monday monring, the system was hacked! And this was on a "unknown" static IP, not one advertised or used publicly.

So any help/tips/links would be greatly appriciated. Recomendations to someplace possibly to get hosting will only be accepted from regular, active, users USING a hosting service, **NOT** from users who are here solely to promote their hosting service!!

Thank you for your help.

-Greg

They have: 7 posts

Joined: Sep 2005

Here is a quick and dirty tutorial for installing IIS on Windows 2000:

http://www.webwizguide.com/asp/tutorials/installing_iis_win2k.asp

mairving's picture

They have: 2,256 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

Not too difficult to setup. W2K server has a tendency to install a bunch of unneeded junk. IIS 5 really needs to have the IIS lockdown tool with URLScan to be secure. IIS 6 which ships with W2K3 Server is much more secure out of the box than it's predecessor.

Still pretty easy to setup, probably the biggest difficulty that you will have is setting the permissions correctly to allow the scripts to run which can be a pain sometimes.

Post back if you need help.

Mark Irving
I have a mind like a steel trap; it is rusty and illegal in 47 states

Greg K's picture

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

Thanks for the replies so far, one thing I realized I forgot to ask, what would you say min requirements would be for this? I have older used systems around, and prefer not to have to use the best fo what is lieing around.

I'm assuming I'll need a little more UMPH than what i use on FreeBSD machines. (our main server here for 12 people is a PII 300Mhz system with a 20 gig hd and 64 megs of ram, plus it has php, mysql, and apache running. It is for internal web apps only and our main file server)

-Greg

mairving's picture

They have: 2,256 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

Greg K wrote: Thanks for the replies so far, one thing I realized I forgot to ask, what would you say min requirements would be for this? I have older used systems around, and prefer not to have to use the best fo what is lieing around.

I'm assuming I'll need a little more UMPH than what i use on FreeBSD machines. (our main server here for 12 people is a PII 300Mhz system with a 20 gig hd and 64 megs of ram, plus it has php, mysql, and apache running. It is for internal web apps only and our main file server)

-Greg

It meets the minimum specs but I would say something over 800Mhx, 256M RAM. HD should be fine. It will work but it will be too slow to be productive.

Mark Irving
I have a mind like a steel trap; it is rusty and illegal in 47 states

They have: 5,633 posts

Joined: Jan 1970

They guy with the linux icon is giveing windows advice.....

ASP.NET requires IIS 6. VB.Net Is modified so it can compile. That means data types and sutch. I used JScript.Net for a while before I switched to C#.Net. It was easy going from JScript to JScript.net.

mairving's picture

They have: 2,256 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

bja888 wrote: They guy with the linux icon is giveing windows advice.....

It's a penguin, not a Linux icon. Don't really run Linux any more either having converted to FreeBSD a couple of years ago. I have 8 servers at work, 4 are FreeBSD, 3 are W2k3 and 1 is a W2K running SQL server, 2 run IIS 6 and 1 runs IIS 5, so contrary to what your post says, yes I do know Windows only too well. Although not from the development side as much as the server side.

I would advise you that posts meant to start a flamefest like yours, are against forum rules. It is also very ill advised to flame a moderator.

Mark Irving
I have a mind like a steel trap; it is rusty and illegal in 47 states

Renegade's picture

He has: 3,022 posts

Joined: Oct 2002

I don't know if they still offer it or if the site is still up, but, you can try brinkster.com. They offer free ASP hosting

They have: 5,633 posts

Joined: Jan 1970

I wasn't tring to start anything I just though it was ironic/funny. And when I see tux I think linux.

Yes Brinkster offers their "educational" package still. I reccomend them! The Cheep/Free accounts dont offer things sutch as C# support.

Renegade's picture

He has: 3,022 posts

Joined: Oct 2002

bja888 wrote: ...when I see tux I think linux.

Um... I think that was the original idea... Plain

Greg K's picture

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

Ok, now that I have access to books24x7.com again, I came across a book that teaches you ASP.NET using Web Matrix on my Windows XP home laptop. Will let you know how it works.

I did a search on here for that, and the only post I found was from a long time ago just asking about it.

-Greg

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