September 1, 2008
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Many websites are now being created dynamicaly using Microsofts ASP.NET language,resulting in web hosts rushing to provide custoymers with ASP web hosting. ASP web hosting should be based on the Microsoft Windows Server operating system (Windows 2003 Server) which ASP.NET was designed for.
Microsoft ASP web hosts will provice access to a control panel to fully manage your ASP application, running on their Windows servers. The Parallels Plesk control panel and Helm which both allow you to manage all aspects of your ASP.NET based web applications are very popular with web hosts at the moment.
Windows Hosting Control Panels also give you access to the installed of Microsoft SQL Server, ensuring full integration between your ASP.NET applications and MS-SQL. From the control panel you will be able to manage your remotely hosted databases, create users, set passwords and define permissions and security settings.
Like any standard shared hosting account your host will provide you with FTP access to your ASP Web Hosting account to allow you to upload your web files and scripts. Development software such as Microsoft Visual Studio have built in FTP to allow you to upload.
Virtually every web hosting package allows access via FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to allow files to be uploaded to their public web space with ease. Also its possible to upload files using the Control Panel’s built in File Manager, which has an “Explorer” like interface allowing your browse, drag and drop files from your desktop to server.
ASP and ASP.NET should really ideally run on Microsoft Windows Server. Please note some hosts do offer “ASP Hosting” running on Linux servers, using using the Sun Chilisoft ASP Environment. It can be slightly frustrating to host your Microsoft developed scripts on a Linux host, as there are a few subtle differences between Linux and Windows hosts (such as file and case sensitivity).
Classic ASP has been quite a while now (at least 10 years or so) and was only recently replaced by Microsoft’s improved ASP.NET platform. ASP.NET has advanced to version 3.5. ASP web hosting has tended to be a “niche market” with a few hosting specialists, but is increasing in popularity, partly due to ready developed packages. Backwards compatibility has been maintained so you older asp applications should work on servers running the newer scripting environment.
You should only choose a Windows based ASP web hosting package if your scripts or applications required ASP and ASP.NET. If your web site only needs static html pages, or perhaps open source scripting technologies such as PHP, Perl or Python then a standard Linux shared hosting package should suffice.
Your choice of Windows Web Hosting because is not down to your choice of home operating system! If all your web site is mainly built of static html pages, then you would be wasting your money on an ASP Web Hosting package.
About the Author:
If you are looking to choose web hosting make sure you check out Jay Newman’s web hosting review site. Jay is also a consultant at a popularcheap web hosting provider