3 Setting 

Up 

3.1 

Base Platform Requirements 

3.1.1 Operating 

system 

CactuShop is an Active Server Pages application and as such needs to run on 

a web server that incorporates an ASP scripting engine. Although Linux/Unix 

servers can be made to run ASP using third party software, CactuShop is 

neither developed nor tested on these alternative platforms and to the best of 

our knowledge it will not run on Linux/Unix. We only endorse and support 

running CactuShop on Microsoft's IIS web server. CactuShop will run fine on 

shared web space but check the platform and permission requirements with 

your host first if in any doubt. Use the free lite version as a test, checking that 

you can successfully add and delete products with images. 

3.1.2 Database 

CactuShop ships with an Access 2000 database file. The ASP code is written 

to be switchable between MS Access, Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL syntax 

(similar but with some small differences). Access 97, MS SQL Server and 

MySQL versions of database are available as free downloads from our web 

site. CactuShop is only tested on the Windows version of MySQL although we 

know of users who successfully have CactuShop running with a MySQL 

database on Linux. However, we only support MySQL on the Windows 

platform. 

3.1.3 VBscript 

version 

The CactuShop code is VBscript   the ASP default language. In order to 

update the VBscript engine, install the latest version of Internet Explorer on 

the server. For the image upload capability, VBscript 5.0+ is required and you 

will get an error trying to update products without it. This will only affect the 

cart if it is run on NT   Windows 2000 includes VBscript 5.0 as standard. 

3.1.4 

Support for third party software 

The system software set up referred to above is a prerequisite for running an 

ASP site. We cannot support set up and installation of Microsoft or other third 

party software   please consult the relevant web sites and use their sample 

applications to test that your server, scripting engine and RDMS (database) 

are running properly. Our tech support does not cover installing Microsoft or 

other third party software or getting ASP support to run on your 

site/development server. 

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