Developing web sites Getting started with web Developement
Requirements before getting started with development or web programming
Any one who want to develop a web application must have the following systems:
1. A web server.
2. An editor to develop the web pages.
3. A browser to view the web page you develop.
4. A database program like MS Access, SQL Server etc, if your web site need to save data into a database.
In the real world situation, a web server will be hosted on a secure server, located in a safe place and will be always connected to high speed internet. However, to develop a web application, you don’t need to worry about security and internet connectivity. You can use your own development computer as the ‘Web Server’.
So, your development computer must have all the 4 program’s mentioned above running well.
Since this tutorial is guiding you to develop web sites using ASP.NET, all the tools we are going to talk here will be the ASP.NET specific tools.
Web Server
There are several types of web servers. But if you like to develop ASP.NET web applications, you need a specific web server called ‘Internet Information Server’ (IIS). And if you like to develop your web site using PHP then i will prefer you to use apache web server.
IIS comes as part of Windows. But it is not installed by default, when you install Windows. Please see the chapter ‘Installing IIS‘ to find more about installing IIS. IIS can be configured to work with PHP.But for PHP technologies Apache with LINUX is prefered.
Editor to develop web pages
Ideally, you do not need any special editor to develop a web application. If you are an expert, you can simply use ntoepad to type HTML and the code for the web pages.
You don’t need to work too on basics so Microsoft gives a tool called ‘Visual Studio .NET’ to edit web pages and write code for ASP.NET.
In case of other technologies then you can get EditPlus,Nusphere PHPed, Dreamweawear etc.You can just search on google for free programming editor and you will get a list 
Visual Studio .NET (VS.NET)
Visual Studio .NET allows to easily create web pages. Some of the benefits in using Visual Studio .NEt are:
- You can simply drag and drop html controls to the web page and VS.NET will automatically write the HTML tags for you.
- Start typing an HTML tag and VS.NET will complete it! When you start typing a tag, VS.NET will show you the HTML tags starting with the characters you typed. So, you don’t need to even remember all the tags.
- If you type any HTML tags wrong, VS.NET will highlight the errors and tell you how to correct it.
So, even if you are not an expert, VS.NET can help you develop great web pages.
Browser
You need a browser to view the web pages you create. If you have any windows operating system in your computer, you will already have a free browser (called ‘Internet Explorer’).You can also download and install other web browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Netscape navigator or Opera.Just search for any of keyword like Opera,Firefox and you will get a long listing.I will prefer you to have at least three browsers but having Mozilla’s and IE6 is better combination for testing and development purpose.
Database program
A database program like MS Access or SQL Server or SQL Express is required only if you need to save data into database. It is not mandatory that all web sites need a database program.But if you want to have a nice dynamic site then i will prefer to make use of databases.It greatly can reduce your file system load by keeping most of data in database and so will result interactive and dynamic web sites.Most of web sites these days are database driven.
For PHP users the suggested database is MySQL. You can get this free from mysql.com web site.
Downloading Required Softwares:-(PHP users)
In case you want to use PHP for web development then you can easily download You required softwares from internet.You can choose any of pref red one fromhere:-
- WAMP (Window Apache MySQL PHP) combination of all of Window Apache MySQL PHP.Freely can be downloaded from internet.Search for WAMP and download this.
- XAMP Same like WAMP integrates all tools like MYsql Apache into a common space.
- Download Apache from apache.net,Mysql from mysql.com and install them seperatly.
