I wanted to use IIS to test run and debug my asp.net 2.0 web pages and websites. As I went on a search to find IIS to put on my computer (XP Home sp2), I found out really fast that IIS doesn’t work on XP home. I found articles telling how to actually put IIS on a XP Home computer, but I don’t support those Ideas since they are violating Microsoft user license and terms of agreements and all the legal stuff you have to follow when you have Windows.

After all of that, I did a search on alternative solutions for running asp.net 2.0 applications on XP Home. I found some interesting results. The main focus of the articles on this site will be on Abyss Web server. Below are some of the things I found.

 

  1. Abyss web server. This is a good replacement for IIS. It runs on Windows 2000, 2003 Server and XP (Home and Pro editions). The thing I like about it is that it has a web based admin section, runs all .net 1.x and 2.0 controls, runs any .net code, is easy to setup, has “plugable” scripting interpreter interface, runs pre compiled websites and all of the standard web server features. There is a free and paid version. For most people wanting to just test their web applications before putting them on a live server, the free version will be good. You can download the newest version Here.
  2. aspdotnet. mod_aspdotnet is a module that fits into apache web server. It has been retired by apache group themselves and was reclaimed by its original owners for further development. This module started to support asp.net 2.0 but has only started to get some basic support done. If anybody knows more about this module and the support it gives, drop me a line so I can put the most recent info up. You can get to the SourceForge project here.
  3. Mono for asp.net. This is a project that hosts asp.net websites and applications. It works like an application server. From what it looked like on the website, you can “plug” Mono into different types of web servers. One of them being apache. For people doing very basic and simple asp.net work, this would probably work for you. It looks like it requires a bit of setting up though. You can find  its website here.

I will be covering how to install and setup Abyss web server in a future post. Keep tuned…

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