> Well, for now I discovered that I can
> install the Microsoft server software, IIS,
> and set up a local server on my computer.
> I'll start from there, and see where it
> leads me.

I'm a programmer, so that's right down my alley.

IIS is for running asp and asp.net programs and you need that for connecting to databases. You can run asp on your local computer if you have it set up as a web server with IIS -- as you said you have.

Now for html pages you don't need a web server set up on your computer, you just open them up inside your browser.

asp.net is more complex and you have to install a lot of other things, so I don't advise you to start out with that.

asp classic is much simpler and easier to learn. You need to use vbscript with it and you can mix vbscript with html on an asp page and run it.

There are lots of excellent tutorials on the internet that teach asp classic. Just put something like "asp tutorials" in Google and you should find gobs of it. It's a real popular programming language and it's easy and fun to learn. That's what they call server side scripting, because it runs on the server.

But there is also client side scripting and it's mainly done in javascript, but you can also do it in vbscript which is much easier. The only drawback with vbscript is that the only browser that supports it is Internet Explorer, which about 90% of the public uses.

But you use client side scripting to do neat stuff like dynamic html (DHTML).

Do this first:

1) create a virtual folder in IIS. Open IIS. and create a New Virtual Diretory under "Default Web Site".

2) create your asp pages and put them in your virtual directoy that you created.

3) You run it like this:

Syntax:
http://localhost/myvirtualdirectory/mypage.asp

Where:

-- localhost (literal) means that it is to run the page from your local computer set up as a web server.

-- myvirtualdirectory is the virtual directory that you created.

-- mypage.aspx is the asp page that you created.