Classic ASP is still a very good option to develop or prototype simple Web applications with. Sometimes you’ll need to transition a classic ASP application from an older Web server to a more modern one. Basically, the ASP is still good, but the server is out of date and needs to be replaced.
When you upgrade your server, for example going from IIS 6 to IIS 8.5 (Windows 2012), you’ll quickly see that you need to make server configuration changes in order for your application to run like it should. See a previous article on my blog for instructions on how to enable Classic ASP on your new Web server (since it is not enabled by default).
Another issue you may encounter is that your migrated application doesn’t work and you have no idea why because the error messages are hidden. This is good for everyday use of your application by regular users, but it’s not so good if you are trying to debug issues with your application setup on the new Web Server. In this blog post I will explain how to set your system so that you can see the detailed error messages that your classic ASP application is throwing. Of course, once you are done and the application is running well, you should consider re-enabling settings so that regular users aren’t shown detailed application error messages. Continue reading “Classic ASP on IIS 8.5: Setting the Configuration to See ASP Error Messages”