Choosing ASP Hosting
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.
Your ASP web hosts will provide you with a control panel to fully manage your ASP web hosting, running on Windows servers. The most popular Windows based control panels at the moment are the popular Parallels Plesk control panel and Helm which both allow you to manage all aspects of your ASP.NET based web applications.
Both Plesk and Helm allow you with access to the installed version of Microsoft SQL Server, ensuring full integration between your ASP.NET applications and MS-SQL. You will be able to create and delete 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.
Every web hosting account allows access via FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to allow files to be uploaded to their web space. Its also 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).
ASP hosting was originally a “niche market” with relatively few specialists, but has increased in popularity, partly due to ready developed packages and greater awareness and competition . Backwards compatibility was maintained by Microsoft, so older asp applications should work on servers running the newer scripting environment.
You should really only need a Windows based ASP web hosting package if your scripts or applications deman ASP and ASP.NET. If your web site is mainly static html files, or utilises open source scripting languages such as PHP, Perl or Python then standard Linux shared hosting package should suffice.
Some people, simply choose Windows Web Hosting because thats what their desktop PC runs. The choice of your home PC operating system has no bearing on your choice of Linux our Windows Hosting, unless you are using your own PC to develop Windows applications. If all your web site requires is static html pages, then you would be wasting money on an ASP Web Hosting package.
Jay Newman :: Sep.02.2008 :: Internet :: No Comments »
