ASP Hosting

Why ASP website hosting?

In recent year ASP has stood in the shadows of PHP partly because the script-dependent Wordpress blog boom that has taken the world by storm. A general misconception today is that ASP has seen its last sunset and simply cannot measure with PHP. This is, of course simply a smear, and fact is that with ASP web hosting you can create advanced websites and web applications, applicable to all web browsers.

ASP and ASP Hosting Services

"ASP", in computer programming terms, stands for “Active Server Pages”. It is a Microsoft technology that began in 1998 enabling the creation of dynamic web pages. Since 2000, ASP has been updated and is now generally seen as ASP.NET, a later server-side scripting application that was developed in conjunction with Microsoft's shift to the .NET framework. The older version of ASP, called Classic ASP, still does have some applications. ASP pages are easily recognizable for their .asp extension in the URL. Web developers searching for ASP website hosting should check that the provider offers ASP support before finalizing a new account.

The Uses of ASP

ASP was designed to allow web developers to easily build sophisticated web applications in the familiar object-oriented programming environment. Compared to other web programming languages, ASP was easier to use and required less coding, yet still created robust, fully-functional web pages and applications.

A number of high-profile websites use the ASP language as their foundation. These include Monster.com, Match.com, MySpace.com, Dell.com, and a number of others. It is not unusual even for institutions with highly sensitive data, such as banks, to use ASP. Although ASP isn't as commonly used as PHP, it's still a very important programming language for ecommerce websites and other dynamic websites, primarily because it integrates so well with MS SQL databases.

For new ASP users, there are a number of free resources and tutorials to be found online to help the developer get started. Novices should be warned: Using ASP is not like using WordPress. ASP is a professional computer programming language, and without some foundation in programming, especially in Visual Basic, ASP will not be easy to learn.

If you own a website but are not comfortable with the programming aspects of the site, you would be wise to seek out an ASP programmer.

ASP Hosting

For any web developer who plans to design an ASP-based website, it's crucially important to find ASP hosting that supports these pages. In general, Windows-based servers will automatically support ASP since they are also Microsoft products. However, Unix, Linux, and other server types can also support ASP. Naturally, the best, least bug-ridden results come from using web hosts that are already using Microsoft-based servers.

If you are planning a particularly large or ASP-intensive website, you should definitely ask your potential ASP website hosting service lots of questions before signing on the dotted line. You'll want to make sure the ASP hosting company you choose offers plenty of support not only for ASP, but also for the database you'll be using. In short, before choosing an ASP host, be sure to do your homework.