front page questions....

[Lee Taylor-Vaughan]

First of all i am sorry that this may be posted in the wrong newsgroup, but
i need help. If there is a better group to post this message to then please
advise.

I want to build a website (or have one built for me) but i dont know what
programs to use. I am very new to the web world, although i am fairly
proficient in MS Access Programming(VBA).

The web site that i want is to serve multiple functions that mulitple
educational training centers can list their courses on and the general
public can goto the website and register for courses. That, in a nut shell,
is a very simple description of what i want. But, there is alot of complex
rule that must be followed for each coures that is offered on the web site.
i.e. one course might have a passing score of X, and the next course might
only be participation only to pass the course. Students must be able to see
their registration history as well as their current courses Student must be
able to see the status of a course .ie. number of spaces available, if
course if full the student is added to a waiting list and then added to the
course when another student cancels or if more seats are made available by
the TC..Students must also be able to download/email themselves a copy of
their completion certificate. and students must be able to pay via the web
site (Credit card). This description does not even scratch the surface of
the complexity of the training center functions that must be available i.e.
reports, ability to cancel/edit/add courses, assign instructors to a course
(then instructors must be able to log in and see the coures they are going
to teach). I am aware this is a very complex project. but my first problems
are:

What is the most stable of platforms (I think i mean servers) to have this
built on?
What is the most secure program to have this written in (i.e. no hacker can
get the data from this tables) ?
What sort of cost would this be (i know this is probably the most difficult
of questions to answer) ?
Is front page appropriate for this task, if not which program would be?
What program would give the most dynamic approach and be light enough to
load on peoples machines that dont have cablemodem?

what other questions do i need to ask?

I really thank you for you help in advance, what ever guidance you can give
me i would realy apprieciate.

thanks

Lee

 

[Steve Easton]

Hopefully one of the "more knowledgeable"
people have contacted you directly, but
I "think" you're going to need a custom created
server side application to accomplish this, which
needs to be run on a secure server.
FrontPage could create the web site "gateway"
for the application, but it's going to take someone
proficient in Visual Studio or a similar application
to create what you want.
repeat ...."I think"

Have you "googled" for such an application?
With the number of colleges out there, I would think
there's a "turnkey" application available.

 

[Jim Buyens]

-----Original Message-----

...
I am aware this is a very complex project. but my first
problems are:

What is the most stable of platforms (I think i mean
servers) to have this built on?

This is a Microsoft newsgroup, so the answer is
Microsoft's Web server: Internet Information Server
(IIS). This comes bundled with every copy of Windows
Server. A developer version of IIS comes with Windows XP
Professional and Windows 2000 professional.

Of course, if you ask the same question on a Unix
newsgroup, they will tell you Unix.

What is the most secure program to have this written in
(i.e. no hacker can get the data from this tables)?

By far, the greatest dangers are sloppy systems
administration and sloppy coding.

If you miss on either count, you and your Web site are
toast.

If you nail both counts, almost any operating environment
will do.

What sort of cost would this be (i know this is probably
the most difficult of questions to answer) ?

If one virtual server on a shared public computer meeds
your needs, $20-$50 per month.

If you need a dedicated server physically located at a
hosting company, $200-$500 per month.

If you're going to buy your own server-class hardware,
$2,000 and up, plus communication lines.

Is front page appropriate for this task, if not which
program would be?

You might use FrontPage for visually designing the Web
pages, but for heads-down programming you should probably
get some version of Visual Studio .NET.

Visual Basic .NET Standard is a large enough subset of
Visual Studio .NET for many tasks, and it only costs $100.

What program would give the most dynamic approach and be
light enough to load on peoples machines that dont have
cablemodem?

This is entirely dependent on your system design and Web
page design.

what other questions do i need to ask?

If your current experience is with Access VBA, I presume
you want to stick with Visual Basic. There are two ways
of doing this:

o Use VBScript with Active Server pages (ASP).
o Use Visual Basic .NET with ASP.NET.

Microsoft has declared ASP a legacy technology that will
be phased out over, most likely, over a very long period
of time. ASP is a quick and dirty technology, easy to
learn, but it's not object-oriented and it doesn't scale
well to large projects (even though some very large
projects *have* used it).

ASP.NET is a new and growing technology. It's object-
oriented and scales very well to large projects, but it's
also more formal.

Developing Web-based database systems is a lot different
from developing Access applications. Be sure to allow
time for unlearning.

Jim Buyens
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://www.interlacken.com
Author of:
*----------------------------------------------------
|\---------------------------------------------------
|| Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out
|| Microsoft FrontPage Version 2002 Inside Out
|| Web Database Development Step by Step .NET Edition
|| Troubleshooting Microsoft FrontPage 2002
|| Faster Smarter Beginning Programming
|| (All from Microsoft Press)
|/---------------------------------------------------
*----------------------------------------------------