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.

Thanks in advance.

 

[itguru]

Hello!

It is not a big deal all you need is to assign default document in IIS configuration it will work fine can you give me some more deatils about UDL (are you using UDL or DSN)?

I will guide you in best way if you provide me these informations..


I hope this will help. iis_guru@yahoo.com

 

[auger]

I am using DSN. All DSNs are working well on the temporary development site. UDL is an interesting topic though...I'm thinking UDL may provide better security. If a page fails to load, I'm thining UDL might reveal less back-end info that DSN. Would that be a correct assumtpion?

What I have for general guidelines so far is:

Ensure MDAC is installed to enable ADO and asp.dll etc.

If IIS version is recent and service packs and updates are reasonably current, we shouldn't encounter too many problems along the way.

Set folders containng ASP scripts to read and execute for the IUSR_machinename account (anonymous web user).

Place the db's in a non-shared directory with change permissions set to 'on'.

Sound good so far? Any and all advice re: security, performance, etc. will be appreciated.

I'm also hoping to gain FTP access to the server and am not sure if that is easy to configure. I don't know if the server Admin has set that up before either so any comments in that regard will also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for responding!

 

[itguru]

Hi !

It is not neccessery to mark all folders as read and execute for IUSR_Machine, If you are using any type of DLL for scripts then you must mark script folder RXRX for everyone + IUSR_MACHINE ,

FTP configuration is really very easy in IIS I will guide you about FTP configuration whenever you plan to start FTP on your Server.
UDL is a Best option for data fetching in your site most of all it is secure..


I hope this will help. iis_guru@yahoo.com

 

[auger]

Yes, that helps. Thanks for your comments. If we encounter any FTP problems, I will come back & post. Cheers.