A website is built with collection of Web Pages and Web Page is designed with html, xml tagging. ASP is a Microsoft technology that creates a web page with .asp extension. A simple web page is design with html or xml tagging, but if you want to use dynamic functionality on your web page then you choose ASP. With ASP file you can dynamically edit any content of your web page. User can access any data or databases from web page and return result to the browser.

ASP stands for Active Server Pages; it is one type of file. It contains text, HTML tags and scripts (VB Scripts, JAVA Scripts). ASP file can run on IIS web server, IIS is a web server that stands for Internet Information Services. IIS comes as free components with Windows 2000, XP, and Windows 2003. Another web server that can run ASP file is PWS Personal Web Servers, comes as free components with Windows 95/98. PWS is fully functional versions of IIS. ASP is a Microsoft technology that can only run on Microsoft Windows platform. ChiliASP and InstantASP are upgraded version of ASP can run without Windows platform. 

ASP File: An ASP file is just as html file, but difference is that it runs from web server. You can use any text editor for write ASP scripts. Scripts in .asp file executed from the web server. An ASP file has the file extension .asp and it executes from the following path; C:\inetpub\wwwroot\filename.asp. It means that your file must be located at c:\inetpub\wwwroot\ with .asp extension.

Scripts support by ASP: ASP file supports VB Scripts, JAVA Scripts. It is simple and faster than CGI and Perl scripts. ASP is configured with VB, JAVA scripts, but if you want to script in another language like Perl, Python you have to install script engines for them.

How to Install Web Server: Basically ASP supports Personal Web Servers (PWS) and Internet Information Services (IIS). PWS is old version of IIS and comes as free components with Win 98/95. To install PWS, run the PWS setup from Add-on folder of Win 98/95 Cds. While IIS is install automatically at the time of system setup, IIS is available with Win 2000/XP/2003/NT. If IIS is not installed automatically then you can install it from following path:

Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Add/Remove Windows Components -> select IIS from list then click ok. After installation of PWS or IIS, a folder named with Inetpub is create at your system drive.