ASP stands for Active Server Pages. It is a technology that enables users to design and creative interactive pages for their websites, using something called “server-side scripting”. What do we mean by interactive?,as well as what is this?

ASP, no longer do webmasters have to concern themselves with what browser a visitor to their site is using. With ASP hosting, our website will appear identically on all computers, on all browsers, a claim that HTML simply cannot make.

When a browser requests a webpage that has the .asp extension where the more familiar .htm or .html would be, the hosting provider’s web server interprets any ASP scripts in the program first and foremost, before delivering any HTML info to the browser.

The main question is why we cannot simply run ASP websites with just any hosting company? The hosting company we choose must have servers that support ASP, or else the ASP scripts we use will be rendered useless.

When examining web hosting companies to find one that supports ASP, we must look specifically for ASP support. We do not simply assume that because a hosting company supports “most web-based scripts, from CGI to Perl” that it supports ASP.

Microsoft brought ASP to the world, and as such provides the platform – Windows – on which ASP generally works best. In order to play around with ASP scripts on our web pages, we’ll have to download and install onto our system an ASP server, like Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) or Microsoft’s Personal Web Server one or both of which is included with most Windows packages for no extra charge.

If we use Windows on our machine and have never encountered IIS or PWS, chances are it’s because we have to “Add” the program to our hard drive using the Windows software CD-ROM or through our control panel, since it’s often not included as part of the Basic Install.

Windows ME and Windows XP Home Edition are lacking in support for ASP scripts. But we’re willing to bet the forthcoming Windows Vista probably does.Which are technically very much advanced.

For those webmasters on a PC that isn’t Windowsbased, something is hopeful. Sun Microsystems has developed a program called Chili Soft ASP that allows other servers such as Red Hat, Apache, and Secure Server and other operating systems such as Linux, Solaris, and AIX to support ASP hosting.

Writing and using ASP scripts is easy too at least it’s no harder than HTML, with all commands occurring between “<%” and “%>;” instead of “<” and “>”. Not so big a difference, is there? And we can find an abundance of software tools all over the web that helps even the greenest novice create interactive web pages rife with ASP.

ASP is such a versatile language that more and more hosting companies are finding themselves compelled to add ASP support to their hosting packages just to remain competitive. This, of course, is only to our advantage as we can comparison shop around for the best ASP hosting offerings right alongside all the other features we’re looking for.