Preparing to Use ASP.NET

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ASP.NET is available from a variety of sources, including http://www.asp.net/, which is Microsoft ASP.NET's official home page, and on the Visual Studio .NET CDs. You can learn more about system requirements, licensing issues, and installation instructions at that URL. Note that to start using ASP.NET, all you need is the .NET runtime installed on your web server. With that, you can begin building ASP.NET pages using just a text editor.

Before installing the .NET framework on a production system, it is a good idea to back up all mission-critical files and applications. This advice applies to any installation, and of course your production servers should be periodically backed up anyway. Given that you are probably installing the .NET framework on your existing Web server, it's good to know that the .NET engine will not conflict with your existing IIS/ASP applications. You will be able to migrate from ASP to ASP.NET as quickly or gradually as you are comfortable with, down to a file-by-file level.

TIP

For more information about getting set up with ASP.NET, consider the following URLs:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/

http://www.gotdotnet.com

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/Dnaspp/html/aspnetmigrissues.asp

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