Posted on February 18th, 2011ASP (Active Server Pages) is a powerful technology from Microsoft, which lets users develop and implement unique interactive web pages and dynamic web applications using the power of server-side scripting. With Active Server Pages technology installed on your Web server, your website can provide a robust interactive experience to its visitors, such as highly responsive forms, on-site search engines, community forums, user interfaces, surveys, polls, e-mail clients and so much more. ASP hosting is actually a type of Windows hosting, as ASP software is only compatible with Microsoft technology, which is also the case with every other server-side Microsoft software. Thus, if you want to utilize the extensive benefits of the ASP development platform, you will need access to a Windows hosting plan or an overall ASP hosting plan which includes the Windows operating system.
ASP Compatibility and Flexibility
In the past, developers had to worry about which web browser a website visitor was using, as it may not be compatible with the web pages that they spent hours to develop. Now, with the advent of ASP Web hosting, developers can be sure that their web pages are appearing exactly the same every time, regardless of which browser the visitor is using. In basic terms, when a website visitor visits a page that has the .asp extension, a request is sent to the server and then interpreted by the server-side ASP software, after which the necessary interactive web page is returned and displayed within the visitors web browser. Thus, the web hosting provider must have servers that support ASP technology, otherwise all ASP scripts will be useless for your websites.
What to Look for in an ASP Hosting Provider
Unfortunately, ASP scripts cannot be run with any web hosting services, as the Web server itself has to be equipped with the ASP technology in order to interpret web pages that are developed using the ASP programming language. When searching for an ASP hosting provider, it is imperative to ensure that the company provides actual ASP support. Never assume that simply because they provide support for the majority of popular web-based scripts, from PHP to Perl, that they automatically also support ASP. Fortunately, finding out whether a web hosting provider offers complete support for ASP technology is fairly simple, and can be done performed easily by checking the Frequently Asked Questions section of their site. Thankfully, most Windows hosting providers automatically include software such as Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS) or Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), which are necessary to interpret web pages developed using the ASP programming language.
Using ASP Technology with Non-Windows Web Hosting Plans
Although ASP is intended by Microsoft to be used with Windows server technology, there is a workaround – if you are currently using a web hosting plan that allows you to change the software configuration of your server, you can utilize a third-party software known as Chili!Soft ASP which allows you to use ASP scripts on all distributions of Linux, Solaris, and AIX. It is important to note that shared web hosting plans do not typically allow you to change the software configuration of the server, so you may need to purchase a VPS, dedicated, or cloud hosting plan to utilize this software.