To set-up your ASP environment you need to install your web and application server. The two popular options are Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS) or Personal Web Server (PWS). The first one is preferred because that is most likely to be your production environment in a real world situation. IIS requires a minimum of Windows NT 4.0 and you install it as part of NT Option Pack. PWS can be installed on Windows 98 and so has the advantage of letting you learn without having a server.

Once installed you normally create a virtual directory in your web server. In IIS you will right mouse click on the web server entry and create a virtual directory. You specify a name for your application and browse to choose a folder on your hard drive to store your source code files (e.g. C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\yourappname). You can probably accept the default settings at this stage (play with the settings once you know more).

You should be ready to go. You can edit your source files with any text editor. Microsoft would recommend Visual Interdev and this colour codes keywords etc but there are others. These could include Homesite,Dreamweaver,Textpad,UltraEdit or even good old Notepad.

Please note,there are ASP compatable servers that are non-Microsoft from ChilliSoft and Halcyon Software.