ASP Server setup 1

[auger]

Hello. I've just created my first complete ASP website. The site was developed on Brinkster Webhost servers and is ready to be posted to a proper web server (IIS). The webserver is currently serving static web pages but it's been up and running for quite a while.

The server admin doesn't have any ASP server experience, nor do I. I'm not even sure what o/s he's running...it's NT4 or 2K; and I'm not sure of the IIS version either. I don't want to hassle the server admin any more than I have to so I'm trying to get a general idea of what server settings will be required on his part to allow the pages to interact with the db's properly. I can set up the DSN's for the pages.

The site has 5 Access 2000 databases on the back-end. All content is added through webforms. A web admin gains access to the db's for admin purposes via web forms (ASP is so cool!). They authenticate (supply a valid userid & pw) via asp to an Access db.

Users generate dynamic pages that pull data from the db's (news articles for the most part) but they can also submit links via webform. These are stored in the db until they are validated by the web admin. Once validated, they become part of a dynamic HTML page drawn form the db. There is a also a forum on the site that also has it's own Access authentication process but users will need r/w priv.

The db's are all stored in one folder and the asp, html, images etc all reside in a variety of folders.

What I'm trying to find out is what will be required of the server admin to accomodate the site and what I should look for as a good site structure. He'll be carving up a chunk of server space for us but I don't know if we'll even have our own drive partition but I hope so. Uplaod access will be via FTP.

Can anyone suggest general guidelines or provide useful links for configuring IIS on NT based webservers? I'd like to give the server Admin a general configuration guidline in the hopes that everything will go smoothly. Things such as: which files need to be made executable & how to do that? Are there special r/w permissions required for Access db interaction and if so, on which folders? For security purposes, we'll probably want to put the db's on their own partition. Are ther eother security issues we should be aware of?

Thanks in advance. The server admin is providing this space free of charge so I don't want to be a pain.

 

[link9]

Well, you'll just want to make sure he/she has the latest version of MDAC installed... that will install all your ADO stuff, ASP.dll, etc... so that the server will run your ASP pages.

In fact, you might just ask him if he's up to date on the "critical updates" from MS. If he is, then you're good to go. Latest version of IIS, ASP, VBScript engine, etc...

Past that, the only thing you really should have to worry about is to make sure that any directory where you're putting your scripts have read & execute permissions set on them (which most usually do by default) for the IUSR_machinename account (anonymous web user)....

Also, the best solution for your databases is to put them in a non-shared directory with change permissions on it. This will keep your database safe from the download possibility (as access db's are actually downloadable files), and then just point your DSN to that directory.

Really, if the webserver is running MS software, and the webmaster has made any attempt whatsoever to keep up with the latest updates from MS (which should be a gimme), then you shouldn't have any problems at all as far as putting ASP pages out there for execution.

good luck!
paul

 

[auger]

Thanks Paul. Comments noted, fingers crossed.