Professional ASP Techniques for Web Masters - Alex Homer

Getting started building a Web site is simple enough-the hardware is cheap, the software is easy to install, and the market of potential visitors is huge. If it's a company Intranet site, you can even run it over the corporate network; with no need for expensive cabling and ISP connections. The problems come as your site starts to grow and mature. Web sites are supposed to be enticing and exciting (so as to attract new visitors), and contain ever-changing content (to make those visitors keep coming back). How do you maintain and keep control of a fast-growing and ever-changing site, while still keeping it informative, accurate, and error-free? The answer is automation; and the combination of Windows NT Server, Internet Information Server, a server-based data source, and Active Server Pages, makes it possible to design your site so that it's easy to manage and maintain. They even make it easier to add regular new content, and keep the site looking fresh. Do you know how many visitors your site gets, and who they are? How can you tell which topics your visitors are most interested in, and which areas of your site get the most traffic-and even what times of day are busiest?;How do you implement secure access to certain areas, so that you can charge for premium content or prevent access to administration pages? This book tackles all these topics-under the three general headings of controlling, maintaining and monitoring your Web site. You won't see pages of setup information for Windows NT and SQL Server, or a tutorial for ASP or SQL. What you will see is down-to-earth discussion of the issues that webmasters have to face daily, and real code solutions. If you are building or administering a Windows NT-based Web site, this book should be on your shelf. This book is aimed at anybody who is building a Web site using Windows NT Server, and especially those that use SQL Server as the data source (though the techniques can equally well be implemented with other data sources instead). The bulk of the book is about Active Server Pages, with some Active Server Components thrown in. Readers will need to be reasonably familiar with ASP and the way that it works, and with the syntax of SQL-the language. It isn't designed to teach newcomers to ASP or SQL about these languages.;Because it is based solidly around real-world situations and working examples, it is ideal for the busy webmaster, Web site administrator, plus the budding designers and implementers that are just getting started building their first site.