What Is an ASP File? Files created with Active Server Pages have the extension .ASP. This story is an example; take a look at the address above. With ASP files, you can activate your Web site using any combination of HTML, scripting such as JavaScript or Visual Basic?

Is It Hard to Use? I don't know about you, but whenever people start talking about doing things on the server, I start to get nervous. I think a lot about threading issues, synchronization, and generally stuff without a user interface. I assume it's going to be hard to do. Well, using ASP is about as easy as anything I've come across in years.

Aw, Mom. Not Another Object Model! I really hate doing this to you, but I'm going to have to use that overused and overcomplex term "object model" again. Here's how it works. When a browser requests an ASP file from your Web server, your Web server calls Active Server Pages to read through the ASP file, executing any of the commands contained within and sending the resulting HTML page to the browser.

There are a lot of webhosting resources out there. Unfortunately, a great deal of them are driven by a huge market in affiliate sales, so it’s easy to stumble across a webhosting directory that will promote a webhost simply on the basis of affiliate sales – even if that webhosting company has known problems with it’s services. However, there are a few good places where you can get good recommendations and have plenty of useful research material. When you visit these places, use the search function – search on a company name and see what other people have been saying. Read the online reviews and dicussion threads that come up.

Do take note that sometimes the larger and more aggressively promoted companies will have a number of complaints made about them, simply for their size. And there are plenty of vindictive people out there who, in being caught hosting wares, hacking scripts, and other activities most webhosts ban outright, like to post negative reviews in WHT as an attempt for revenge. So when you do see such negative threads, you need to go to read those threads to see the context they are posted in. Of course, the good reviews are also helpful, but especially watch out for praise for companies who, when faced with major server or network failure, have still managed to keep their customers happy.