Introduction to Active Server Pages Microsoft®
Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server-side scripting environment that you can use to create and run dynamic, interactive Web Site applications. With ASP web hosting, you can combine HTML pages, script commands, and COM components to create interactive Web pages or powerful Web-based applications, which are easy to develop and modify. For the HTML Author, you will find that server-side scripts that run on the Windows asp hosting platform and written in ASP are an easy way to begin creating more complex, real-world web site applications. 

If you have ever wanted to store HTML form information in a database, personalize hosted Web sites according to visitor preferences, or use different HTML features based on the browser, you will find that ASP hosted web sites provide a compelling solution. For example, previously, to process user input on the Web server you would have had to learn a language such as Perl or C to build a conventional Common Gateway Interface (CGI) application. With Active Server Pages web hosting, however, you can collect HTML form information and pass it to a database using simple server-side scripts embedded directly in your HTML documents. 

If you are already familiar with scripting languages such as Microsoft VBScript or Microsoft® JScript® (JScript is the Microsoft implementation of the ECMA 262 language specification), you will have little trouble learning ASP web hosting. For the Experienced Web Scripter Since ASP is designed to be language-neutral, if you are skilled at a scripting language such as VBScript, JScript, or PERL, you already know how to use Active Server Pages. Whats more, in your ASP pages you can use any scripting language for which you have installed a COM compliant scripting engine. ASP comes with VBScript and JScript scripting engines, but you can also install scripting engines for PERL, REXX, and Python, which are available through third-party vendors. For the Web Developer and Programmer If you develop back-end Web applications in a programming language, such as Visual Basic, C++, or Java, you will find ASP web hosting a flexible way to quickly create Web applications. 

Besides adding scripts to create an engaging HTML interface for your application, you can build your own COM components hosted on servers that support .asp web hosting. You can encapsulate your application's business logic into reusable modules that you can call from a script, from another component, or from another program. 

The Active Server Pages Model A server-side script begins to run when a browser requests an .asp file from your Web server. Your Web server then calls ASP, which processes the requested file from top to bottom, executes any script commands, and sends a Web page to the browser. Because your scripts run on the server rather than on the client, your Web server does all the work involved in generating the HTML pages sent to browsers. Server-side scripts cannot be readily copied because only the result of the script is returned to the browser. Web site visitors cannot view the script commands that created the page they are viewing.

Use Microsoft developed powerful web development tools such as FrontPage (See our introduction to Microsoft FrontPage at http://bottomlinecom.net/frontpage-web-hosting.asp ) and Visual Interdev for more advanced/professional web developers and web sites.

Why host your Active Server Pages Enabled Web Site with BottomLine?:
Host your ASP website on our affordable asp hosting plans and be assured that your web site will host your Active Server Page web site correctly and reliably. Though our support is predominantly related to web hosting issues, we have the familiarity with Active Server Pages technology to assist you in debugging errors in page development that might be due to incorrect ASP coding. We're here and happy to try and help out.  We virtually guarantee smooth & proper operation of your properly developed & configured ASP web site hosted on our Windows web servers.