Is there a small classic ASP server like ASP.NET Development server that comes with Visual Studio?

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+3 Q:

Is there a small classic ASP server like ASP.NET Development server that comes with Visual Studio?

I would like to hear if there is a small classic ASP server, similar to the ASP.NET Development server that comes with Visual Studio?

We are a small group that supports a legacy (classic) ASP site, and would therefore like to have a small server that easily can be executed on a Windows XP machine. Currently we're stuck with IIS 5.1 on our development machines (and because we're running XP Pro, we cannot update to IIS 6 or 7).

I've tried installing the Cassini web server, but that doesn't seem to work with classic ASP either.

Your only real choice is to either run Windows server or Vista in order to get the latest version of IIS.

Cassini doesn't support classic asp.

Chris Lively 2009-05-11 19:31:58

According to this post it is not possible to run ASP on Cassini. A couple of google searches later I have still not been able to find any other alternatives either.

What functionality is it that you're after? If it is the quick-and-easy running features of VS, you can quite easily make the IDE debug on IIS (although ASP cannot technically be "debugged" - what you really do is just run it with the Ctrl+F5 command).

Tomas Lycken 2009-05-11 19:37:52

I've no problem debugging classic ASP using the combination of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and IIS 5.1 on Windows XP Pro, I just hoped to find a classic ASP web server with smaller footprint than IIS like the ASP.NET Development Server (former Cassini).

PropellerHead 2009-05-11 20:05:32

I think there is unfortunately no option... =( Not too surprising though, as Microsoft more or less left classic ASP to its fate almost ten years ago. One option for you as a team, if you don't want to have IIS installed on each computer, to have a small (internal) testing server setup, on which you can arrange storage, check-in/out etc as you wish and load your files to for testing. This is of course tedious compared to testing locally, but VS has pretty good built-in support for working over FTP, i believe even so you can upload automatically and run from a remote server.

Tomas Lycken 2009-05-11 21:04:42

That is also an option, but that will heavily complicate a debug-scenario using VS2008.

PropellerHead 2009-05-14 05:55:45

Not necessarily. For one thing, I believe those settings are solution-dependent (or at least I think you can make them). For another, VS2008 does support remote debugging, although I have never tried it myself so I don't know how hard it is. But remember that Chris doesn't want debugging for this project - you can't debug classic ASP anyway...

Tomas Lycken 2009-05-14 07:03:56

+2 A:

You're not going to get anything extra from ASP by running on IIS 6 or 7. Are you having any specific issues with being stuck on IIS 5.1?

great_llama 2009-05-11 19:44:09

If I really had to run IIS, I hoped to run the latest version of IIS, but it is nice to know that there isn't any changes in regards to classic ASP.

PropellerHead 2009-05-11 20:07:56

Actually you are getting something extra, with IIS 5.1, you're only able to create a single website, with IIS 6 (and 7) you can create multiple websites.

PropellerHead 2009-05-14 05:44:56

If you use IIsAdmin.NET http://www.codeplex.com/iisadmin you can create multiple websites on XP. You can still only run one at a time, but the tool lets you switch between them easily.

great_llama 2009-05-14 11:25:56

Here is a web site that allows you to run classic ASP pages from any web server (including IIS and Apache), but it costs money:

http://www.selisoft.com/en/ahtml/index.phtml

icemanind 2009-05-11 20:14:39

-1. Why pay for something which is already present on XP Pro?

AnthonyWJones 2009-05-12 08:10:33

Actually that is just moving the issue from one web server to another.

PropellerHead 2009-05-14 05:56:49

+2 A:

The short answer is No, there is no small web server that runs classic ASP. There are many alternatives, as mentioned here, such as IIS or Apache plug-ins, but none that has a similar small footprint like the ASP.NET Development Server that comes with Visual Studio and that supports debugging.

PropellerHead 2009-05-18 20:07:29

+1 A:

Have you tried Baby Web Server? - http://www.pablosoftwaresolutions.com/html/baby_web_server.html

AnonJr 2009-05-18 22:44:11

I've tried it, and although this is a small classic ASP development server, it does not support debugging using Visual Studio (as IIS does).

PropellerHead 2009-05-19 09:55:18

Thank you for the link, I don't need debugging so this worked perfect!Thank you

shaiss 2009-10-20 20:06:21

+1 A:

Abyss web server http://www.aprelium.com/ supports classic ASP (also ASP.Net, Ruby, and PHP) with a 3rd party extension that cost $$$. But at one point there was a free version of the third party component, you MIGHT be able to find a copy of that still floating around. Not sure about debugging.

infocyde 2009-06-16 18:01:25

+1 A:

There is a small footprint web server that runs Classic ASP.

Its called Abyss Web server. Abyss Web server is produced by Aprelium software and can be downloaded free of charge. Abyss Web server can be configured to run with ASP.net OR Classic ASP.

The Server can be configured to run ASP.net without any addition downloads.

To run Classic ASP on the server a program called ActiveHTML written by Selisoft must be downloaded and configured to allow Classic ASP to run on the Abyss web server. Active HTML is on a 45 day free trial and if you like it the purchase price is currently around 30 to 40 euros depending on whether you need a client or server version.

Hope this helps.

Anthony

2009-08-29 22:21:44

+1 A:

Baby ASP Web Server can take care of things for you, PLUS you don't have to install it, so it doesn't plop all sorts of crazy settings into your registry.

Get it here

Vrye Denker 2010-04-01 06:43:27

ansaurus

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Is there a small classic ASP server like ASP.NET Development server that comes with Visual Studio?

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