First off, hi everyone...this is my first post after referral to this site!

Now for my problemn....I recently (foolishly) agreed to design a website for a friend who has a small start-up company.

I agreed to do the site for free, partly because they don't have much money, partly because thier needs were very simple and also partly because I am definitely not a professional/commercial web designer.

Since then, they asked if I could add a "communications page" where members can login and add comments to a form for use as a record of job-related issues & concerns.

I agreed, not knowing that this was beyond my meagre abilities and now after much scouring of the net trying to find information for setting this up I realize that there is lot's of information out there....I just don't know how to apply it.

I used FrontPage to design the site and from what I have learned I should use ASP and an access database but I have no clue how to do this...I have tried to go through a few tutorials but they all seem to assume a level of knowledge that I just don't have...

My friend wants the page to look something like this mock-up http://www.careconnectionco-op.ca/communications.htm
with members of her company able to login and add data from thier home computers with a password....

If anyone out there knows of some ASP for dummies-style sites or has any assistance they can offer I would really appreciate it...especially if it's instruction in total layman's terms or downloadable, editable files.....I would like to learn more but so far it's been very frustrating...

First off all, get rid of Frontpage, it's horrible for HTML and even worse for ASP. I reccomend Source Edit

You'll want to approach this project in small, easy to manage pieces. First create the form that the user will use to enter data, then create a page similar to the mock-up you gave. None of these will do anything at this point. But at least you now have a starting point.

Your next step will be to setup a database to hold all information you need. You can do this directly in Access, save the database, then upload the .mdb file to your server.

Then, create an asp page that the form you created will submit to. There are many tutorials out there on how to submit forms into a database. Here's one: http://www.webwizguide.com/asp/tutor...tabase_pt2.asp


Then, use your mock-up page to read the database and return the results, one row at a time. Again, many tutorials: http://www.codeave.com/asp/code.asp?u_log=35

As far as login is concerned, if you host supports it, you can use windows built in password protection. This should be your last step and we can figure this part out when you come to it.

This is a very high level overview of what you need to do. Just take it one step at a time and come back here if you get stuck, we'll help you out.

Good luck.

Thanks a lot for all that...I'm going to sit down right now and give it another go. Wish me luck! hehehe! Thanks again.

I beleive I may be in much the same boat as nexxus. I use FrontPage at my local hospital and my HR director want the info on the on-line application to comeback to him in a more readable format. I'm lost. I, too, know only enough about FrontPage to be dangerous.

I could use some direction (explicit, please!)

Thank you.

Here is something I put together about ASP that hopefully might help somehow.

You and others can have access to a database hosted on the Web from any location that has a browser with an Internet connection.

The Web database concept makes sense if you and your people want to do work in various locations in or outside the office and still be "plugged" in.

For example you could have employees enter timesheets or have sales reps log their contacts. Or perhaps you'd like customers to be able to check the status of their orders online without having to call the company.

If you want a Web database, typically what would happen is that a database such as Access or MySQL (basically just consisting of tables) would be put on the Web.

Then "dynamic" Web pages (such as classic ASP pages which include VBScript, HTML, and/or JavaScript) would be created acting like the old desktop database's queries, forms, and reports to access the database - all hosted on a Web Server.

Dynamic Web pages are similar in many ways to regular HTML pages. But they are "live" because the user can read from and write to information in the database. An example where you can login and add, edit, or view fictional customers and invoices is at http://www.bullschmidt.com/login.asp

Not all Web hosts will handle dynamic Web pages but many do. The Web hosts that can handle ASP pages usually have a Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 operating system running an IIS Web server.

Here are a few good ASP sites:
o ASP101 Samples - http://www.asp101.com/samples
o W3Schools ASP Tutorial - http://www.w3schools.com/asp
o Microsoft VBScript Language Reference - http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/...bscripttoc.htm

And the following newsgroup is good:
microsoft.public.inetserver.asp.general

Or for a "quick and dirty" generic ASP open source solution to putting databases on the Web (often works well for the admin area of a Web site which doesn't need to look too unique) that just requires setting up a configuration page for each table or query and uploading the database to the Web as long as there is an autonumber field in each table (and you'll probably also separately want to create login capabilities), perhaps try something like this:
GenericDB by Eli Robillard
http://www.genericdb.com and then click on the Tips link to see an example