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.
HTML is all well and good for building static Web sites, but let's be honest--it doesn't do very much on it's own.
Thank goodness then for ASP, Microsoft's software add-on to its IIS web server package which allows Webmasters to add dynamic content to their creation through the use of scripting.
With Professional ASP Techniques for Webmasters, Alex Homer shows how to get the best from the technology, turning his attention to the better ways in which Webmasters can employ ASP to maximal effect.
From site security to remote data access and user access logging, there's something here to pique the interest of even the most confident site owner.
Homer, a prolific computing and Internet author, has produced another quality publication, combining in-depth--but not verbose--content with plenty of "type and try" examples.
The only downside, and this is a small thing really, is he lack of examples written in JavaScript. Almost everything in this book is presented in VBScript , which isn't a big problem to translate over if you're a Jscript fan but it would have been nice.
At the end of the day, it's easy to criticise a work for the things it doesn't contain. Happily there are many more plus than minus points for Professional ASP Techniques for Webmasters and it makes truly interesting reading for those of us with Microsoft-based web solutions.
