ASP First Contact

In this article I hope to provide you with the Basic Knowledge of what is ASP and how it works.

ASP stands for Active Server Pages.Active Server Pages are HTML pages with embedded ASP scripts that are processed on the server before the page is sent to the user. ASP enables you to create dynamic database driven pages, a user can access data in a database, and interact with page objects such as Active X or Java components.When the user enters a URL in the Address Box or click on a web page you are asking the web server to send a file to your computer; if the file is standard HTML, then, when your web browser receives the web page it will look exactly the same as it did on the web server nothing different. However if an ASP file is sent to your computer from the web server, firstly, the server will run the HTML code; and then, run the ASP code. For example: the ASP code could be the weather or time; and other such information.

You will need to find a web host who will host your website on a Windows 2000 server. It is safer to host your ASP pages on a Windows 2000 server as they are more stable and most ASP components work with IIS (Internet Information Services), specific to Windows. You also need to consider if your web site uses a database (e.g. SQL, Access) and then make sure your web host provides support for the type of database your web site uses.

Look out for more ASP articles to be published.