IIS

[KateYoung]

Where the heck can I get IIS 4 from  ?
Seems impossible to find !

Regards

Kate

[Rob Pomeroy]

There are good reasons for that...   What do you need it for, if you don't mind the nosy question?

[Rob Pomeroy]

If I remember right, it's in the NT4 Option Pack, by the way.

[KateYoung]

If I remember right, it's in the NT4 Option Pack, by the way.

Yes it is but I cannot find a download link ANYWHERE !

would like it to setup a local websever for testing my ASP webpages before I publish them on the net.

So go on then that's your challenge...... since you fixed my webcam problem !!! LOL

I'll be waiting for the link M8 !

Kate

[KateYoung]

I'm still waiting Rob !!   LOL

[Rob Pomeroy]

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.  Get Apache!

[KateYoung]

you know what I will post if I use that   ......


How the heck does that work then ?

Kate

[Rob Pomeroy]

Apache is the most widely used web server on the planet.  It is an open source project (i.e. free) and can run on Windows, Linux, or many other platforms.  My preferred platform for Apache would be Linux, because of the huge performance benefits of running a webserver on a stripped-down OS, but if you just want to use it as a testbed personal web server, grab yourself a WAMP distribution (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP).  That gives you the web server, database server and scripting language all in one.

Oh, you will quickly detect my contempt for ASP and preference for PHP, but doing worry, if you're willing to be a good disciple, you'll find that converting to PHP is a cinch.    You can incidentally run ASP code on Apache too (if you must) provided the ASP module is installed.

Wampserver is one of the foremost WAMP distributions and is an absolute doddle to install.  >Get it here<.

So go on then... what will you post if you use that?  

[KateYoung]

This is what I'll be posting......


Can you suggest a good tutorial for PHP cause I ain't got a clue ?
How does Apache work and how do you use the *censored* thing ?
What do I do now ?
How do I cope going out of my safe zone ?
Does anyone know a good supplier of vallium or cheap retailer for boooze ! ?


LOL
Kate

[Rob Pomeroy]

Can you suggest a good tutorial for PHP cause I ain't got a clue ?

http://www.w3schools.com/php/

How does Apache work and how do you use the *censored* thing ?

Once you've got it installed, it works out of the box.  Just place your HTML files in the web root, as you would with IIS.  It works in much the same way as IIS - listening on port 80 and responding as required.  Configuration is different, because it is largely based around text files, but that's not as big a problem as it sounds.

What do I do now ?

Have a large slice of banoffee pie, and everything will be all right.

How do I cope going out of my safe zone ?

See above.

Does anyone know a good supplier of vallium or cheap retailer for boooze ! ?

Not needed; see above.

Trust me, when you see how much quicker websites respond on Apache/PHP compared to IIS/ASP, you won't regret it.  And PHP has an absolutely huge following (due once more to being open source), so you can find code snippets and libraries for just about anything you want to do.

Would I lie to you?  

[KateYoung]

How does Apache work and how do you use the *censored* thing ?

Once you've got it installed, it works out of the box.  Just place your HTML files in the web root, as you would with IIS.  It works in much the same way as IIS - listening on port 80 and responding as required.  Configuration is different, because it is largely based around text files, but that's not as big a problem as it sounds.

Everything here sounds good except the above..... my web cam sits on port 80 & 1600 can you change the port number on Apache ?

The banoffee pie sounds good.
lol
Kate

[Rob Pomeroy]

Apache is just as configurable as IIS, if not more so, so yes.  But are you sure the webcam exclusively locks port 80?

[KateYoung]

Right I now have the following installed.....

Apache 2.2.3-win32
PHP 5.2.0-win

Apache installed and running
php installed
MySQL installed

Where is the root directory (iis would be wwwroot) in apache and what should it be called.

now what do I do ?
not sure how all these interact with each other! LOL

p.s. webcam appears not to be clashing with port 80
p.s.s tutorial looks quite good

[Rob Pomeroy]

Apache is the program that listens to incoming requests for web pages and decides what to do with them.

Any web page ending in .php gets passed to the PHP parser before its output is sent back through Apache.  .php pages generally (but not always) contain lots of HTML code, with the PHP code between <?php ?> tags.  See the tutorial for more on that.  If you want to code in PHP, I think Dreamweaver may have a PHP syntax highlighter that you could use.  Personally I do all my coding in plaintext with a good syntax-highlighting editor.  (My current favourite is PSPad Editor - I have tried a lot of different web/php IDEs on my travels; PSPad is my favourite to date.)

MySQL is a database server (like MSSQL).  It resonds to SQL queries on port 3306.  PHP contains MySQL functions and you can therefore use PHP code to query a MySQL database.  A very good example of this is the phpMyAdmin web application that is installed with Wampserver, which you can use to administer your databases.

Before I answer your other questions, was it Wampserver that you installed?

Incidentally, a proviso about Wampserver: unless you know what you're doing with the configuration, I only recommend it for personal use.  It is self-consciously a very easy but insecure install.  It needs a lot of tweaking to make it ready for production use, and I think the Wampserver guys know that.  Their emphasis is ease, not security.

If you find you like Apache/MySQL/PHP and want to use them in a production environment (as I have done for years), it is best to install the individual components from scratch.  That's a lot harder, but worth the effort.  Perhaps save that for next year.  

[KateYoung]

Thanks Rob

I have installed each application individually as I couldn't find WAMP version.

Dreamweaver does handle PHP but when I preview in IE or FF nothing is displayed or I get a page not found error on localhost .... i.e. using the echo command as per the tutorial

<html>
<body>

<?php
echo "Hello World";
?>

</body>
</html>

Localhost & 127.0.0.1 work fine as I get "It Works" displayed in the browser when I type in either of the addresses.

Think I have found the root server under apache directory - htdocs.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

As for mysql I'm gonna forget that for now and concentrate on learning PHP... once I have learnt that then it should fall in place (I can always hope LOL )

I'm hoping PHP is going to be easy for me to pickup as I used to be a dos database programmer using Dataflex and never managed to migrate to VB and windows object programming.

Kate