I’m making some changes to a legacy classic ASP application. I’ve made the changes locally, and now I want to copy the changed files to the server. At the same time, I need to download the Access database, add some fields to some tables, and upload it again. For this reason, I need to be able to stop visitors from modifying the database while this is happening.
My main question is, what is the best way to setup a quick ‘Down for Maintenance’ page that will be shown immediately and no matter which page the visitor requests. The application is already established, so I’d rather an answer that didn’t require me to rework the application’s architecture.
My second question (maybe this should be a separate question): Is there a better way to add fields to a db table than to copy it down, modify, and stick it up again? Please forgive if that’s a dumb question – I’m new to ASP – new to Windows too.
I only have FTP access to the remote server.
Thanks.
If you have just FTP access to the server (and no control over the IIS) just insert a response.redirect to the ‘down for maintenace’ page in top of all the asp pages, and remove it when the update is completed.
The changes to the database can be performed with the ALTER TABLE statement.