ASP Web Hosting
Active Server Pages (ASP) is a technology used to build dynamic and interactive web pages, and uses a server-side scripting language to dynamically generate the page that can then be viewed by any web browser.
The scripting language that is typically used for generating dynamic content is VBScript. However other scripting languages can be used as well such as JScript, a version of JavaScript developed by Microsoft.
Typically, ASP pages will have a .asp extension rather than or .htm. The extension is used to inform the web server that the page contains scripting commands that must be executed before the finished page can be sent back to the requesting browser. Since the scripting commands are interpreted before the page is sent to the browser, the scripting commands themselves are never shown in the page. If a site visitor views the source, they will see nothing related to ASP other than standard HTML and the dynamic data generated by the ASP scripting commands.
Think of ASP as an additional step required before the page is viewed. This preprocessing step can be used, for example, to access a database, retrieve several rows, format the retrieved columns of data into and ordered list, and then finally send the completed page back to the browser for viewing.
All web pages containing ASP commands must be run from a web server that supports ASP. The web server that typically supports ASP is Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) that runs on Windows 2000/XP/PRO/NT4 servers. Nearly all ASP is run under Windows, although other web servers such as Apache can run ASP under Sun's ChiliSoft ASP.
If you plan to build pages using ASP, it is recommend that you find hosting that supports Microsoft Windows. I refer all of my clients to HostGator that need ASP hosting. Their infrastructure is reliable and the customer support is exceptional. Also, all of their shared and reseller servers are now 130% wind powered!
Orangetree Internet Service LLC, located in Santa Cruz, CA., helps small to medium sized businesses setup hosting solutions with business hosting plans, personal site hosting plans, and custom web hosting plans. Contact us at 830-212-1884 for more information.