Doug G

Apache has a module home_directories which does the URL to home directory mapping you showed. I don't know if IIS has anything similar.

Another reason to use specific include files rather than one big file is the way interpreted code works on the web server. When a php file is first loaded by the server, the entire script is "pre-processed" by the interpreter which builds a global list of functions, variables, etc so the code can execute properly. Only after this entire file scan completes does the code start executing. The time to load the file from the filesystem is much less than the time to do the initial file scan. As far as I know, anyway

ispconfig is an open-source alternative to cpanel.

Why? www.example.tld and example.tld are two different url's. If you want both to work for the same website you'll need some kind of rewrite or redirect, in apache you'd probably use mod_rewrite.

I read in the news last week there was some kind of hack attack going on against osCommerce sites. Perhaps something more for you to research. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2011-08-11-mass-website-hacking_n.htm

If you have IIS7.5 perhaps this will be interesting to you (google turned up this page): http://www.servicefirstsupport.com/KB/a538/how-do-i-import-an-htaccess-file-into-iis-75.aspx

You'll need a decent Visual Studio 6 edition, you probably should get the Enterprise edition to make sure you have the necessary modules to support your existing program. Your program may have other 3rd party controls embedded in the application and you may need to obtain them too in order to adequately maintain the application. Learning different programming languages is always a good thing imho, but learning how to work with the various IDE and deployment environments will probably take more work than the coding itself. And if you're called on to maintain existing VB6 I'd wait on getting into NET until you get comfortable working with the VB6 environment.

Installing software modules you don't use may create unrecognized security vulnerabilities in your server's websites. PHP features you're not paying attention to may give potential hackers more ammunition.

Back in High School I wrote my first machine-language program on one of these: http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cdc160/photo/

Some PCMCIA cards were double-height and wouldn't fit in the card slot in the Toshiba I'm typing on right now.

I suspect the interest is if there is any quality drop/improvement/change after Lenovo bought out IBM. IBM has a very long track record and Lenovo not so long, so it's pertinent to ask imho. Everything I've seen says Lenovo has maintained the excellent quality that IBM branded machines offered, but I haven't every used them myself.

Look for any DNS problems on either the server or your workstation. A dead DNS server can really slow things down.

Some of the binary downloads from php.net are compiled to use c:\windows\php.ini I had that happen once, simply moving php.ini to c\windows solved the problem for me.

Don't forget a text file will be accessible to anyone with access to the filesystem of that server, such as server admins, other developers with ftp/ssh/shell access, etc.

They are both good. I'm typing this from linux on a Toshiba

Do you have IIS impersonating a different user than IUSR_ when working with phpMyAdmin? Maybe you just need to add permissions for a different user account or group. But giving additional permissions to c:\windows\temp shouldn't be much of a risk, it's not a URL that's accessible from a user's browser.

I've used this one. http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php?topic=About

It's easy enough to connect to an access db from a windows web server. My recommendation is you do not use Access as a web db for a shopping cart unless you want to deal with a potential security nightmare. Access is a file-based db and unless you set up everything exactly right you may be offering your db for download to the first hacker that comes by. Use a real database server like mysql, mssql, oracle, etc which has many more ways to keep your data safe from prying eyes.

You could try using xampp or some other all-in-one package. I use xampp on Windows 7, it took maybe 3 minutes to have apache/mysql/php up and running.

Sounds like you need to set the mysql server root password.

I don't know what a dbm database is. php has drivers for mysql, mssql, and with odbc you can use other databases that have odbc drivers.

./configure is a command for linux, not windows. configure is one of the steps when compiling a program from source code. On windows you won't have a compiler available unless you've installed one yourself.

I have limited DNS requirements and manage nearly all dns through godaddy's dns, it works fine. I have a number of domains registered with godaddy with bare minimum registration only, no upgrades, hosting, etc. The dns manager is available free on registered domains, but you need to use the provided godaddy nameserver ip's for your domain's nameservers. You can also get a couple free dns domains at zoneedit.com , I've had a couple dns domains there for 10 years or so with never a problem.

ActiveX is a Microsoft technology. Yes, you can do desktop-like software in a browser with activeX, but if you're not in a completely Microsoft intranet environment you'll probably have major difficulties getting everything working.

I use xampp myself. Here's a long list of alternatives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_WAMPs