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The answer is short: the ADO & ODBC tandem.
ADO is a programming interface to access data in a database. As from IIS 4 (Windows 98, PWS), the ADO programming interface ships with IIS as a built-in interface. ODBC stands for Open Database Connectivity. ODBC is a standard application programming interface (API) for accessing database management systems (DBMS). It's available to any Windows operating system as from Windows 95. (source: Wikipedia)
Long story short: in classic ASP - when using the the IIS-built-in ADObjects - you can connect to any popular DBMS (Access, Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, ...) by simply creating an ODBC connection on your local computer or server.
To use such DSN in your classic ASP application:
dim db : det db = Server.Createobject("ADODB.Connection")
db.Open "DSN=mySQL" (in case you named your ODBC connection "mySQL")
From there on, your can launch any CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) statement against your data. Both MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle and PostgreSQL provide 64bit ODBC drivers. So classic ASP developers benefit from the very latest bug fixes and improvements that come with every new release of any given ODBC driver.
This is amazing. And it somehow ensures that classic ASP is there to stay. Even if it's going nowhere. Perhaps ... because it's going nowhere. I really think so.
Happy coding!
- Sergio says: (04/02/2022 09:53:46)Hi Pieter,
a question since in the post you mention MySQL.
Can QS use a MySQL database? - Pieter says: (04/02/2022 09:58:56)Sergio, yes. It did back in 2008. But at that time, MySQL was not unicode-proof. So I dropped support for MySQL and kept support for SQL Server and Access only. Today I only use Access. And it works fine. Never had any issue with QS on Access ever since I decided to stop using SQL Server somewhere 3 years ago. I now host 300 QuickerSites on Access. No problems at all. This website also uses Access. I have customers with up to 10.000 unique visitors/day, on Access.
Why would you want to use MySQL for QS? - Sergio says: (04/02/2022 10:28:01)It was just a curiosity, and I was wondering why I hadn't given the option to use a MySQL database.
But now in your answer I understand.
I recently discovered this editor: https://code.visualstudio.com/ and with great pleasure it has support for asp classic (with plugins), maybe it can be useful for you. - Pieter says: (04/02/2022 12:14:30)Yes I know that editor. But I prefer Notepad++ for asp coding. For coding in general btw :)
For a customer I need to babysit 6 WordPress websites. Shocking results after 1 full year of babysitting:
- in total, a handful plugins suddenly stopped working (forcing me to disable automatic updates)
- sites went down completely due to badly working plugins
- websites got hacked for unexplicable reasons and needed to revert to backups.
1 year... This is a joke. QuickerSite hasn't been upgraded since 2014. Not a single issue. Guess to which CMS I will migrate these 6 sites....
- Pieter says: (02/02/2022 19:45:13)whooops once again. a WP site, 18 plugins. all up-to-date. 1 plugin causes the complete site to crash.
you have no idea how often i had to update wp_options and set active_plugins to a:0:{} already...
What. A. Mess. - JohnW says: (25/04/2022 16:15:09)Were you running them on IIS? I have to support a couple of Wordpress sites on a Windows server. I find that WP out of the box works like a dream on IIS but there are issues with some of the plugins because the developers have only ever tested the thing in a UNIX environment. With the plugins which were hang when you try to update them I find you can get around it by downloading the zip, opening it and dropping the directory it contains into the appropriate place in File Manager.
There's also a site I run written in classic asp, but that isn't obvious because I use URL rewriting. Every so often I find 404 errors in the server logs which are the result of someone (or something) looking for a non existent WP login page. I'm tempted to add a page which fits the URL and put a rude message on it.
Few weeks ago I received this message. It really meant something to me. So I decided to share, as an alternative Happy new year wish. Happy New Year BTW!
"Pieter, many years ago I came across Quickersite and I payed I think for something (I hope I was a payer and not just a downloader) and I was overwhelmed with how amazing it all was. I thought I'd found the holy grail for me being a provider of web services... but my history has followed a similar trajectory to QS and I'm now wandering the plains with a lot of other buffaloes wondering what to do next. I read your posts occasionally as they are, and for a weird reason - it gives me hope. Hope because what you had going here was SO ON THE MARK. But the world rotated a little in another direction and twitter/FB / Instablah and all the other mindless platforms took the collective consciousness away from individual effort and relevant opinion, such that QS no longer had a home. ... Why? Who knows, the world is just different now and windows of opportunity open and close for the most inexplicable of reasons. This could of course be used as an equal answer to: "Why does humanity exist"? A: "For inexplicable reasons". So; no more Concorde, no more digital watches, no more moon landings and no more QS. It is in good company and I loved it."
Hi fellows of QuickerSite,
It took a while again to come up with a new blog post. It sure seems like I’ve doing basically nothing lately. And even if that’s the case for most of the time, I DID come up with some ideas to break the extreme boredom of my life.
For some reason, in the past week, a single of one my songs got released on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer. And it is airplayed on a bunch of local radio stations in both Belgium and The Netherlands. Go figure. And I’m even in it for nothing. I got amazing support from a friend musician, my bass-player actually.
It’s a Dutch song about the huge collection of old, wrong and lost loves of my live. There are a few dozens.
Please be my guest and discover, enjoy and SHARE as much as you can. I love you!
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/petecorman
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/be/artist/pieter-cooreman/1294423452
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6v3B1qel8jsKLI8cl4ZBY3
Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/en/artist/13348657
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pietercooremanmusic
Website: https://www.pietercooreman.be
Today I built a website for a customer again… finally. The last site I did dates back from a couple of months ago. It really feels like I’m retiring. But I’m not, nowhere near actually.
I did it in Mobirise - the free edition - even though I have a commercial license. That’s because I want my customers to be able to take over the site after I hand it over.
Some say Mobirise is boring. And that’s true. Especially the free edition is… plain stupid & simple. But it works. Customers DO understand how to drag/drop a block, add an image, edit a text, and next click publish. So they’re happy.
I have 2 accounts at Mobirise. One for my commercial license, the other for the free one. All it takes is 2 different email addresses. Not very complicated in the end. But you also need 2 different computers to handle this. And that’s a little annoying.
It sure looks like Wix is everywhere these days. They must have a very appealing reseller/affiliation program. I personally think Wix is extremely expensive compared to self hosted solutions like WP, Mobirise or QuickerSite.
Talking about QS… It still hurts to realize we didn’t make it. Because QS (still) is the most reliable, the fastest, the most versatile CMS I could ever have come up with. The galleries, the formbuilder, the newsletter, the intranet, the forums, the list pages, … these were all very useful features. And they still are. I recently (few weeks ago) uploaded quite a few improvements to the QS GitHub repository. Mainly cosmetical changes, and things related to HTML5 (finally). Small improvements for all sorts of forms and the QS formbuilder.
But those updates do not change the fact that QS is dead. But not yet buried.
My aspLite experiment ended up nowhere too, and no one seems to understand where this could have lead to, or how it could have put classic ASP back on track. But as MS is focusing more on hosted services (Azure, Office 365, Xbox Live, GitHub and more) it’s becoming clear that guys (or small companies) like me have absolutely no impact on the future of their hosting/developing products. We’re on our own. So they are. It’s sad. Open source technology has taken over this past decade.
Take care!
- Bob says: (08/08/2020 11:52:46)By coincidence I edited a QS site today. I got my "activation" email on 26/04/2008. So twelve years later QS is still the best CMS I have found or used (and I think I have used them all)
- David says: (09/08/2020 13:47:21)Me too Bob, I still have a few clients on QS and they never give me any problems. SEO is getting to be an issue on some of the older ones but that's mostly to do with responsiveness and missing SSL
I just updated a test site with the new codebase on GitHub but not seeing any obvious changes, maybe it's mostly to do with the inner workings.
Good to hear from you both, keep safe :-) - Mik says: (15/08/2020 08:06:07)Also me, I still have more customers using QS. I have always believed that QS is the best CMS, which is due to all the points you are making on Pieter. Too bad there is no further development on QS. But it's never too late .... :-).
- Pieter says: (15/08/2020 12:00:29)Thanks guys! Well QS is on GitHub now... Everything has been put in place to save it for the future and keep it alive somehow.
The truth is: in these past 6 months, it has had 0 issues, 0 pull requests, 0 actions, etc... And it barely had visitors and/or downloads.
Lately QS suffered from some issues due to recent Microsoft changes to OLEDB drivers (I assume) causing some features in QS to crash (like creating, copying, deleting sites). I *think* they have been solved by now.
The thing is, as long as QS is my personal playground, nobody will feel comfortable adding things to it... or taking the lead in one way or the other. And the ASP code is sooo complicated (and scrambled) that it's nearly impossible to start making serious changes... That's how I see it at least...
I’m near to complete a first release of aspLite. There is still some documentation to write. And that will no doubt result in a few optimizations and fixes.
What started off as a light-weight ASP/VBScript framework (a bit of an empty box though), turned into a very exciting ASP Ajax formbuilder, facilitating feature-rich SPA’s (Single Page Applications).
The new demo is such an SPA, including 24 different forms. Some are expecting user-input, others are just delivering dynamic content.
These past few days I started to realize that developing such SPA’s is much more complex than building web applications the more “classic” way, with plenty of response-redirects to rebuild tables and parts of the GUI. It’s obviously more complex to build Ajax-driven apps. Hence the need for a framework.
Because things can get complicated very quickly, I made sure to include a "basic" example that most ASP/VBScript will quickly be able to understand (including me).
If you did not have the chance to have a closer look at aspLite, make sure to do so and download the current version from GitHub. Please report any bug or share any feedback! I'd love to work towards a first release in the coming days.
- Pieter says: (15/05/2020 19:19:58)It's a WRAP! Today I have released aspLite v0.1.0 - https://github.com/aspLite/aspLite. These past 7 weeks were amazing. I have learned quite a bit about JavaScript frameworks, their potential, but also their limitations. One thing has become very clear to me: there will always be some browser-compatibility issues when using any JavaScript library. A bit of a browserwar cannot be avoided as it seems. That said though, JavaScript frameworks and libraries are there to stay. The rise of JavaScript development frameworks (driven by Google, Twitter and Facebook) this past decade has made that very clear.
Being able to combine them with a solid server-side technology like ASP, puts a web developer in an even stronger position. When it comes to database-integrations or file-sharing, solid server-side security is indispensable. With aspLite I have found a way to position myself between the popular JavaScript frameworks on the one hand, and a solid server side framework delivering secure applications on the other.
Because make no mistake: JavaScript frameworks are extremely prone to security breaches of all sorts. It's not because ajax calls do not expose parameters in the address bar of a browser, that they are secure. They never are actually. JavaScript frameworks always need to be implemented with care, and with serverside security in mind. And that's not always obvious, to say the least.
Anyway, enjoy aspLite!
It’s not even a month ago that I baptized my early Covid19 ASP-experiments aspLite…. This past month has been amazing. Just to name a few things:
- GitHub gave me back my developer-vibes
- I learned how to use GitHub as a free hosting company (including free SSL) for HTML websites (only)
- I struggled my way through VBScript’s rather limited (but useful) capabilities to work with binary files – but I managed, and how…
- I developed a brand new jQuery multifile uploader with client-sided image-resizing capabilities (never been done before in ASP)
- I discovered DataTables (thanks again Sergio Conselvan) and wrote a rocking fast classic ASP integration for it (never been done before in ASP)
- I learned a bunch about jQuery’s Ajax integration and why it’s still the best JavaScript toolset out there
- Learned how to use CKEditor 4 & 5 with classic ASP
- Finally understood the buzz about JSON and why it has drastically changed the web development business in the past 15 years (and why JavaScript is so popular today)
- Dived into Bootstrap (again) and I’m convinced it’s still the way to go for new web applications, even after 10 years.
- I fully understand that QS has an outdated GUI, but it’s still the best web application I ever developed, and it always will be.
- Classic ASP is dead. But that has its advantages too. No worries about compatibility-issues. ASP 3.0 has not been updated ever since 2000.
- aspLite collected 11 stars on GitHub. And I’m VERY happy with that.
- finally, I have been reading CNN’s news feed (just for developing purposes) a lot, and I now know they’re not really keen on Donald Trump. Quite on the contrary.
Not bad for just 1 month...
My development rage is running at cruising speed. You can read everything about it on https://asplite.com/
Demo: https://demo.asplite.com/
Download: https://github.com/PieterCooreman/aspLite
Always happy with some feedback or a bug report.
For some weeks now I'm on a crazy development trip. It's really serious. Terrifying. Ever since this Covid crisis I'm basically doing nothing but code my way through numerous ideas and issues. Day by day. From the moment I wake up, I start making to do lists from everything I've been thinking of during the night. I remember I went to the exact same thing when I developed QS, back in 2007-2008. I haven't changed a bit apparently.
And yes, it's all about ASP/VBScript. I am developing a new framework: https://github.com/PieterCooreman/ASP-VBScript-Framework. How stupid is that??? It's incredibly stupid. But I like it so much.
This thing needs a name... Can't think of anything.
My development trip sure has been given an amazing boost by GitHub. GitHub has made me feel comfortable as a developer again. It takes care of versioning, keeps track of the history of scripts, releases, etc. GitHub Desktop helps a lot to synchronize my local development environment with the online repository. I discovered "Markdown" as an easy way to write release notes and documentation. Anyway, GitHub adds a lot of professionalism. And I need that.
GitHub also serves as a basic free CMS: https://pietercooreman.github.io/ASP-VBScript-Framework/.This "projectpage" lists all Markdown (.md) files in a given branch. You can select a template (basic). That page gets automatically updated when I write documentation in my Markdown files. In theory, a GitHub repository can be *just* a bunch of Markdown files - thus a simple website. And it has SSL. See https://pages.github.com/
ALL FOR FREE...
I'm waiting for a contributor to jump-in on any of my repositories. I have 8 of them. So far, nobody has presented him/herself as a contributor. But I understand. I'm on such an intense trip that I would not be able to cooperate with anyone anyhow.
Programming is a very very very lonely business after all. I really think it is. Pretty much like writing songs is. It's me, myself and I. But that does not mean getting input and feedback from others is not important. It usually drives the developer towards even better results.
Happy programming!
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (02/04/2020 20:34:18)Now get a Slack account, and get another tool professional coders use... I have self discussions on it on a daily basis, in my Wordspace, but also use it to have direct live discussions with the actual team that develops WP...
But mainly, because I use 3 different computers, I use it as a central place to hold files, notes, tasks to do etc... without worrying about computer synchronization. It's awesome until your stupid expensive router goes out, which it did yesterday, so I ended up going out there and buying a new one (what, you thought Covid19 would stop me from having wifi)?
P.S. If you don't hear from me again, it means that the virus got me,... see you on the other side..., probably downstairs, not upstairs ! - Pieter says: (03/04/2020 14:54:14)Even if the virus hit you, you'll make it through this Nick. Stay home safe though. The closest it got to me so far is my brother. He's working in a hospital and he appeared to be wearing rubbish masks. He is not sick at all, barely shows symptoms, but he has to stay home obviously.
I named the thing aspLite. Check out https://asplite.com
I host asplite.com (Mobirise) on Github Pages. It includes an SSL on my own domain. For free. The files are stored in my repository and if you download the GitHub aspLite repository, it also includes the entire asplite.com website. That opens up opportunities especially when documentation would get more extended in the coming months.
To me this appears to be some sort of "Holy Grail". I can host ad-free html/css/js (only) websites on GitHub for free (1 website per repository). Limited to 1GB/site. This is a perfect match with tools like Mobirise. I will further explore this in the coming days/weeks. - Pieter says: (03/04/2020 15:56:56)Updates:
1. not only you can host an SSL certified 1GB website on your own domain for FREE, you can also make use of the built-in historization and versioning of GitHub. So you can not only easily revert your websites back to any given moment in the past, you can also label them as "Releases".
2. When using tools like Mobirise, where you need the project.mobirise files in the root, it's now easy to cooperate with your customers. Versioning conflicts will be sorted out automagically by GitHub.
3. Anyone (including your customers) can use the Issue tracker to report issues with a given website, or do Pull requests when he/she faces bugs. Via "Insights" you have website visitor statistics.
Oh man... I TOLD you I was on a trip. Microsoft owns GitHub. So I hope one day this aspLite project will come to their attention.
Weird times. As a father, I love being stuck with the children. As a developer, I love having time on my hands to focus on new technologies and learn new things. As a musician, I love the silence around me. But people are getting infected and are dying at a rapid pace. Very ambiguous.
For some time now, JavaScript seems to be the most popular programming language on the globe. I've recently created a GitHub account and when browsing the most starred repositories, they're basically all about JavaScript. Often combined in HTML and CSS frameworks. React, Vue, Next, Electron, Node, Angular, Three, jQuery, Reveal, Atom, etc...The list is endless actually. A little too long to my taste maybe... Anyway, one thing is very clear: any JavaScript-app will work in all current browsers, from the smallest mobile phone to the biggest desktop computers. No doubt about that.
Bootstrap is still doing very well too. The first version of Bootstrap was released in 2011. That was around the time I stopped the active development of QS. I somehow regret not having adopted Bootstrap for the QS backsite (and some front-end modules). I once added a Bootstrap 3 compatible menu-tag: QS_BOOTSTRAPMENU_3. I guess it still works. But Bootstrap is on version 4 now.
On a side note... Given the popularity of this uncompiled scripting language for both frontend, backend and even mobile app-development, Microsoft could have been much more successful by extending their own (more visual) variant named VBScript, the scripting language that is most often used in ASP classic code. That is... instead of creating their bloated .net monsters. Have I said that before?
So it looks like it's the perfect time to learn how to write good JavaScript code. On GitHub you can find some "repositories" that collect all sorts of ebooks and tutorials. THE most starred repository is freeCodeCamp - a full academic curriculum mainly on JavaScript, including various certifications. All for free.
Keep it safe out there. Or better... stay inside!
Time has come to realize that QuickerSite has come to an end. Active development stopped somewhere in 2014 already. I will keep on hosting QuickerSites for my customers as well as for some resellers.
This is a tough decision, but it feels like the right thing to do. I have finally made up my mind about offering hosted services only, rather than freely redistribute and support codebases that need updates and patches on a regular basis.
This website QuickerSite.com, the forums and some other functions will be available for many years to come. Existing users can always contact me on info@quickersite.com to receive the latest version of QS or discuss any issue. I will no longer offer the QuickerSite-codebase to new users however as from February 2020.
This has been a wonderful adventure and as is often the case, the most important thing that remains is friendship. Thank y’all for this wonderful time.
Take care!
Pieter Cooreman
developer QuickerSite
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (22/01/2020 22:25:15)QuickerSite will always have a special place in my heart. It was the first serious CMS I started using. The best thing about this project however, is that I made lifelong friends because of it...
RIP QS !
- hughw says: (24/01/2020 20:01:06)Just a little thank you Pieter for having created such a great CMS in the first place and for being there when I needed you (not that I ever had to call on you very often, because QS is so solid!).
Not only that, but how many CMS developers also sing to us so well? I shall miss that!
I'll be keeping my QS site going for a while yet (still using ASP a lot for our own projects) but I fully understand your decision to draw a line under the mighty QuickerSite.
Thanks once again.
Hugh - David says: (25/01/2020 14:59:40)I can only mirror the sentiment already posted, sad to see the end of Quickersite but glad to have made so many quicker friends. Good that you will continue support for existing customers, I have a few still running QS.
Pieter, if you had the opportunity to go back in time and do it all over, would you and what would you do (if anything) differently? - Pieter says: (29/01/2020 17:54:46)Thanks guys. One day I write a song about QS
The main reason for taking QS offline is simply because there are far more better CMS solutions today, for both small and big sites. No, I’m not gonna name WordPress.
By the time I started my web development career, ASP/VBScript was rapidly growing and I managed to develop quite a few interesting large web applications. Most of them are still around. That's how I got the idea of developing QS, as a compilation of all the scripts and classes I had been collecting over the years. Big chunks of QuickerSite-code were written back in 1999-2002. I only released the first version of QS in 2006.
To answer your question David, I don't really regret anything as far as QS itself is concerned. If today I would do it again, I would stay away from Windows Servers and choose PHP or JavaScript instead. By the time QS was stable and secure (2009-2012) there were not enough experienced ASP/VBScript developers left who could have contributed to the project. That is the main reason for QS not to take off as it could or should have. And me being completely unable to delegate the developing part...mainly because of my fear for performance and security issues. That's exactly what WP always suffered from (and probably always will). Especially when using lots of (outdated) plugins....
