In this exciting update, I'm thrilled to announce the release of QS44, which introduces the page media-feature. Adding images to any page is now a breeze, and the best part? It's fully responsive! Responsiveness has always been a challenge with the outdated CKEditor software. This new feature can be previewed here.

You can download QS44 directly from its GitHub repository.

Speaking of CKEditor, it's become a commercial product. We started using it back in 2006, under the name FCKeditor. After version 2.6.6, I transitioned to its successor, CKEditor. Interestingly, that trusty FCKeditor 2.6.6 still runs flawlessly on a handful of older QuickerSites I host.

The version of CKEditor used by QuickerSite (4.4.5) dates back to 2014, and it's never caused any problems. It was a reliable editor then, and it will continue to be for years to come. However, if we needed a new WYSIWYG editor today, we'd be stuck. None offer ASP Classic support for file uploads, which CKEditor did.

The CMS Landscape and the Rise of WordPress

The CMS landscape has drastically changed. Today, WordPress reigns supreme. This server hosts 200 WordPress websites alongside 300 QuickerSites. While QuickerSites are resource-efficient, WordPress sites gobble up processing power. My server bill has doubled since adopting WordPress!

While WordPress is free as a CMS, it has a surprisingly large server footprint. Even a basic WordPress installation with a few plugins consumes 100MB of disk space, spread across numerous files and folders. This grows significantly with plugins like WooCommerce, Astra, or Elegant.

This shift towards WordPress has pushed me to explore Apache/Linux servers. It's clear that Microsoft is phasing out ASP/VBScript anyway. 

Looking Ahead: New Ventures and Continued Support for QuickerSite

Despite these changes, I'm fortunate to pursue my passion for web development as a web design professor at a nearby college. Using WordPress has sparked a desire to develop a similar platform with built-in multilingual support from the ground up. While WordPress is excellent for the US market, it falls short for European businesses and institutions when it comes to multilingual capabilities. I've heard positive things about Drupal (a Belgian product) in this regard, but I haven't had the chance to use it myself.

In the coming months, I'll be focusing on teaching and revamping my course materials, methods, and the tools I use. If these improvements benefit QuickerSite in any way, I'll wholeheartedly dive back into QS development.

New Opportunities and the Looming Threat of War

2025 brings new regulations for Belgian VAT-registered companies. The government wants to closely monitor invoicing activity to automate tax calculations and prevent fraud. Many companies are developing software solutions to streamline this process, and I'm considering creating my own ASP Classic solution. Development would likely only take a few weeks.

While these opportunities are exciting, they pale in comparison to the global conflict brewing between Ukraine and Russia. It's a conflict with worldwide ramifications, yet no one dares to acknowledge it as such.

The days between Christmas and New Year are a time for reflection and decision-making. While I always strive to achieve this, it remains a work in progress. Regardless, here's to a Happy 2025! 

I haven't released a new QS version in a while, but that's about to change soon. My recent work with WordPress, experimenting with Bootstrap for other projects, and exploring the Google Search Console have all inspired me to refine some existing QS features and even create an entirely new plugin.

After having played with WordPress for several months now, it's about time to compare it to QuickerSite. Or better, ask myself the question: when to use WordPress and when to stick with QuickerSite?

When stick with QS?

• For small sites
  
  QS has a 14MB codebase. WordPress starts with a 80MB codebase and a 10MB MySQL database. The WordPress codebase quickly grows into 100's of megabytes in case you use plugins. If you host 100's of such websites, WordPress blows up your server's hard disk.
   
• For customers who do not want to dive into the complexity of the WP admin panel
  
  Let's face this. The WP-way of dealing with content is complex. Posts, pages, blocks, patterns, templates, plugins, themes, but above all: the way all these are all mixed up. An average non-tech user is not able to use WordPress without at least one or two training sessions. As a self-employed entrepeneur, you may find yourself in a position where you simply cannot provide adequate support for a large WordPress user/customerbase.
   
• For speed, performance and security-reasons
   
  QS development has ended years ago but it's still rocking fast, solid and safe. WP development is always ongoing and you never know when security/performance bugs will hit your site. 
   
• If you are into Classic ASP development, QS is your perfect partner.
   
• In case you need an intranet with dozens (or even hundreds) of site editors, each having access to their own pages and media (only)
   
• If you know how to deal with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you may find QS somewhat easier to integrate with them.

When use WP?

• If you need e-commerce (Woocommerce is a great, no, it's an AMAZING plugin)
• For complex websites with lots of different functionality, you need lots of plugins for
• If you are into PHP development, WP is a no-brainer.
• If your customer is willing to learn and dive into the complexity of the WP admin panel, go for it.

In all honesty, I prefer to keep on using QS for most sites I ever built and ever will build or need. Except in case I'd need e-commerce. I really fell in love with Woocommerce, even though it messes up the performance of your complete site. Even then... love it. But not enough to use WP for any type of site. WP is simply too bloated. 

I wouldn't have been me if I'd not look into ways to link developer frameworks to WordPress. So I did: https://playground.iseral.be/

I can now use WP as a container app for custom Classic ASP development using aspLite and Bootstrap, something I've been doing very successfully over the last years. 

Are there other JS/CSS frameworks you can think of?

I have never been a big fan of WordPress. But I was wrong all the time. WordPress is in a transition however. It's slowly going away from blog engine to a visual website design tool. Slowly. I share the things I learned these past few weeks. Enjoy!

I have been playing (a lot) with WordPress on IIS (Windows Server 2019) lately. Nick has been very helpful by guiding me around. WordPress is some kind of an application in the end as long as you stay away from performance-killing plugins.

Even though IIS is not the recommended host for WordPress, it does the job. And the stronger your specs, the better. I get very good results on a very basic AWS Cloud Server with 8GB of RAM on 2 CPU's. 

The web.config below is all you need to:

1. Have a recent version of PHP working (PHP 8.3.11 in the example below) for all PHP files
2. Add the one and only static file handler for all other files. 
3. Have index.php as your (only) default document
4. Have a rewriting rule to mimic the unsupported .htaccess
5. Note that this web.config does not deal with any MicroSoft technology (.NET or Classic ASP).

Here it is:

I am offered a job as a teacher in Webdesign. So I have a question for you guys. What would you consider modern webdesign tools, trends, do's and dont's? Thanks!

Support for Classic ASP/VBScript is scheduled to be removed on future Windows releases.

This makes no sense at all. Therefore, please sign the petition to stop this madness! 

Sign the petition

My ebook about aspLite has been read over 1000 times meantime. Happy to share some of the comments so far:

Ilkertr:
I remembered my old Classic ASP programming days. I couldn't learn new asp.net. When I saw your page, I found the excitement of developing something with Classic ASP again. Thank you.

David:
A good read Pieter. Really enjoyed reading about the history of classic ASP and particularly your work in the early years. 

Brian:
It's a great read and good that there is still support for this underrated programming language.

Ömer:
I read your ebook until 4:00 AM last night without skipping a line, and I was very impressed. Each sentence made me feel as though I had discovered a long-lost companion with whom I had been wandering the same forest for almost 30 years, yet never knew existed.

Tony:
It made interesting reading especially as, like you, I was left out in the dry as a Classic ASP developer and what made it worse for me was that I had worked for Microsoft for 6 years prior to 1999! Talk about slap in the face, I couldn’t believe it at the time and felt very annoyed that I had dedicated so much time and effort to learn a development language that I had thought would keep me going for years to come!

This is what I'm doing it all for. I just hope this ebook somehow helps people to get on the road again with their Classic ASP skills. 

I've been quite busy these last few weeks. After the release of Setlistplanner.com, I developed some apps for my wife's dental practice. I made her a waiting list app and an app to manage her stock. I reused the application template I also developed Setlistplanner on. It's a very promising template, making use of aspLite.

Right after, I was so excited that I decided to write a book about how I used aspLite in Setlistplanner.com and how aspLite led to asplForms, an AJAX-first developer framework for Classic ASP developers. It's a wrap, my ebook is done. It ended up as a highly opinionated MicroSoft bash on its 6 first pages. The rest should be OK.

Lately I have also become a big fan of Google Search Console. It appears that both url-redirection and missing canonical urls are two of the most common issues reported for QuickerSites and my hosted websites in general. My one-codebase solution for all my hosted QuickerSites is under pressure. I once made sure that https://quickersite.com/downloadsection and https://quickersite.com/r/downloadsection are both serving the same page. The "/r" is the name of the virtual directory in IIS. But that is a problem for Google Search. It's marked as duplicate content. I need to look into that someday soon.

I also looked into a new robots.txt file for all my hosted sites. So far, I'm using one of the available suggestions I found on GitHub. It should block many unwanted bots, for what it's worth. Bad bots do not respect robots.txt files anyway.

But what ate most of my energy these past few days, was MicroSoft's recent announcement to retire (and eventually remove) VBScript in future Windows versions. I kind of take it that Classic ASP is in palliative care. Clock is ticking. This announcement is very bad news for us, isn't it? After VBScript gets removed from Windows, it's totally gone. It's no longer available in IIS either. Even though it's not going to be for tomorrow, MicroSoft is clearly up to completely removing Classic ASP-support. I can only advise NOT to use Classic ASP anymore. This day was coming for a while now. But still it's very bad and sad news.