Can I use Visial Basic to build website?

[cin2002]

I want to build a website which just can access for a group of users using Visual basic as frontend language and Microsoft SQl as backend, but I am not going to host the website because I don't have web server.

Can anyone tell how to search a hosting company?
What information should I ask to hosting company?
Can I use Visial Basic to build website?

 

[pharcyder]

What do you want to use as frontend, a programm or a website ?

There are some differences between that.
First thing is there are sure many providers that can host your database. Just look for a provider supporting Databases and ODBC-connections (for MS-products ....)

Now to the differences between the frontends.
Your provider will host your database.
Now you could just set up a connection from your local host to the database from a frontend stored on your pc. Like MS-Access. (Pros: easier to develop, Cons: Only users with the frontend can access the database...)

Or you programm websites, stored on the server, as the frontend. (Pros: Only one version can be accessed by many users. Cons: Harder to develop, security issues ?)

If you really want to use Visual Basic, stick with ASP (Active Server Pages). Look that your provider supports this. ASP use Visual Basic Script, this should be easy to learn if you`re good at Visual Basic.

Active Server Pages are mixed with HTML and the Visual-Basic-Code. The Code is compiled on the server (when a page is accessed) and then the HTML is sent to the client. So the client never sees the code, only the "compiled" result.

You got to use a HTML-Editor like Dreamweaver (UltraDev), Homesite or FrontPage for programming your ASP-sites if you don't want to do it by hand.

Hope this helps,
perhaps you now see a light at the end of the tunnel,

greetings from Germany,
Jens.