ASP is an acronym for "Active Server Pages." It is a piece of software that enables users to create interactive web pages using "server-side scripting" for their websites. What does the term "interactive" mean? In-site search engines, blogs, user forums, calendars, newsletters, WhoIs searches, web-based email, polls, surveys, hit counters, and more are available.
The best part about ASP is that webmasters no longer need to worry about what browser a visitor to their site is using. Your website will seem exactly the same on every computer and in every browser when you choose ASP hosting, which HTML just cannot do.
The hosting company's web server initially interprets any ASP scripts in the program before sending any HTML data to the browser if a browser requests a webpage with the.asp extension instead of the more common.htm or.html extension. This is the reason why you can't just choose any hosting provider to run ASP websites. The servers used by the hosting business you select must support ASP, otherwise the ASP scripts you use won't work.
In order to identify a web hosting company that supports ASP, you must specifically look for ASP support. Do not automatically assume that a hosting provider supports ASP because it claims to handle "most web-based scripts, from CGI to Perl."
. Go to the hosting company's FAQ and search for ASP if it isn't stated explicitly elsewhere on the sales site. And since the majority of FAQs can be searched, doing so shouldn't be challenging. If you have a particular hosting provider in mind (or their current deal), but you can't locate any information on ASP support, think about getting in touch with them by email, phone, or web chat to find out. It's possible that they support ASP and simply have a subpar sales site (which could be a sign of something entirely else).
Microsoft introduced ASP to the world and, as a result, offers the operating system, Windows, on which ASP often performs best. You must download and install an ASP server like Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) or Microsoft's Personal Web Server (PWS) on your computer in order to experiment with ASP scripts on your web pages. One or both of these ASP servers are provided with most Windows packages at no additional cost. If you use Windows on your computer but have never met IIS or PWS, it's likely because you have to "Add" the application to your hard drive using the Windows software CD-ROM or through your control panel because it frequently isn't included as part of the "Basic Install".
Incidentally, ASP scripts are not supported by Windows ME or Windows XP Home Edition. However, we're prepared to wager that the upcoming Windows Vista will.
There is yet hope for webmasters using non-Windows-based PCs. Chili is a software package created by Sun Microsystems.Soft ASP that enables ASP hosting on other operating systems, including Linux, Solaris, and AIX, as well as other servers, like Red Hat, Apache, and Secure Server.
Because all instructions in ASP scripts are placed between "%" and "%>;" rather than "" and ">," they are also simple to write and use. It's not that different, is it?
And there are a ton of software tools available online, many of them free, that allow even the most inexperienced rookie to construct interactive web sites rich in ASP. Because ASP is such a flexible language, more and more hosting providers are being forced to include ASP support in their hosting packages in order to stay competitive. Of course, this just works to your benefit since you can compare the best ASP hosting options alongside all the other features you need.