I was organizing some of my notes and papers today (a laborious task) and came across this document I created a couple years ago. At the time we had recently hired several junior developers and also ran into some serious FrontPage extension issues on our web development testing server.

If you don’t know about FrontPage server extension you are better off. Basically the geniuses at Microsoft thought FTP wasn’t good enough for them so they invented something that wasn’t nearly as good. The developers who maintained classic ASP applications (we are mostly a .Net shop, but off course still have several applications on ASP 3.0) used FrontPage server extensions to connect Virtual Interdev to IIS.

After spending some time troubleshooting the issue I asked the obvious question of why where people still programming this way. I created this step by step guide to help people migrate from Visual Interdev (part of Visual Studio 6.0) to Visual Studio 2005. It is targeted at very junior developers and classic ASP programmers who aren’t familiar with IIS or AD. I haven’t seen anything on the internet that walks the user through this step by step so maybe someone will find this helpful.

Step 1: Install IIS

• Install IIS
• Setup ASP.net
  • Run from command prompt: C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv2.0.50727aspnet_regiis –ir
  • For information purposes here is info on aspnet_regiis
• Re-boot machine
• If you are running IIS 6.0, In the IIS Manager, go to the “Web Service Extensions” folder (in the left pane menu under your local computer)
  • Enable
    • Active Server Pages
    • ASP.Net v1.1.4322
    • ASP.Net v2.0.50727
    • Server Side Includes
• Setup helpful error messages in IIS. This will allow you to see the actual programming error and stack trace when a page throws an error. You can find the instructions to do this here.

Step 2: Setup a Virtual Directory

• Create a windows directory under C:Inetpubwwwroot, I created
• Open up IIS Manager (can be found in Administrator Tools)

1. Click on your machines name
2. Click on the Web Sites folder
3. Right-click on the Default Web Site
4. Select New à Virtual Directory
   1. You’ll see the Virtual Directory Creation Wizard, click Next
   2. Create an Alias, click Next
   3. Browse to the windows directory you just created, click Next
   4. Make sure the Read and Run Scripts boxes are both checked, click Next
   5. Click Finish
5. You will want to setup windows authentication for this virtual directory if your application authenticates the users against Active Directory

Step 3: Create ASP 3.0 File Template in Visual Studio 2005

• Follow these instructions to setup a ASP 3.0 file template

Step 4: Setup ASP 3.0 Solution in Visual Studio 2005

• Open up VS 2005
• From the Menu bar go to: File –> Open Website
  • If you do not see this option
    • Make sure you can use the Visual Source Safe (VSS) explorer to open the development VSS server
    • In VS 2005, go to: Tools à Options (make sure the checkbox Show all settings is checked) à Source Control and select Visual Source Safe from the drop down box
• In the Open Website Wizard
  • Choose “Source Control”
  • Select the VSS directory where the project resides
  • Select the virtual directory on your local machine that you setup in step 2

Step 5: Setup Application’s Active Directory Groups on Your Machine

• It first might help to take a look at the Active Directory groups for your application. To view the Active Directory group structure (this is not necessary)

1. go to: Administrator Tools, choose Active Directory Users and Computers
2. in the left hand menu pane right click on Active Directory Users and Computers and click connect to domain
3. in the popup type “{domain name}” and click Ok
4. in the left hand menu pane expand the menus

• If you do not see “Active Directory Users and Computers” in Administrator Tools you may want to install the Active Directory Admin Pack. (again this is not necessary)
• Add the Active Directory groups your application uses to your local machine
  • You can do this by adding them manually (you’ll have to log off and log onto your machine afterwards)

Step 6: Setup Common Components used by ASP 3.0 Applications

• Install other components your application may use.
  • You may find it helpful to search for “CreateObject” in your application

Your application might be trying to use a version of the MSXML object that is not on your machine. You can download this object from the Microsoft website here. Before installing this object you may want to verify that it is the same version as the one your application is trying to use.