You can't just stick ASP in a HTML file and expect it to work. Learn what needs to be done on the webserver to get started with ASP.

ASP is a language which is interpreted before the end user sees the webpage. That is, if you write a block of ASP code to create a list of available books for sale, the end user won't see any of that code. He or she will only see the nicely formatted list of books, just as if you wrote that list manually in HTML.

This means that you need to set up your webserver to know to process the file before handing it over to the end user. These instructions are for IIS, but the steps are similar in other web server systems.

Go into whichever IIS manager you use. Highlight the website you're interested in. For that websitethat you'd like to use ASP with, right click and go into PROPERTIES. You'll get a multi-tab page with all of the details of that webpage.

Click on the HOME DIRECTORY tab. In the lower area is the Application Settings group. Click on Configuration.

Add two new lines to this area with the ADD button. These lines should read:

Extension: asa
Executable path: c:winntSystem32inetsrvasp.dll

Extension: asp
Executable path: c:winntSystem32inetsrvasp.dll

If your asp.dll file is located in another directory, indicate which one it is actually in. That's it! Name your files with a .asp extension, and you should be ready to start using ASP code.

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