Web hosting reviews

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.

As with standard shared hosting your host will provide you with FTP access to your ASP Web Hosting account to allow you to upload your web files and scripts. Popular software such as the Microsoft Visual Web Developer or Microsoft Visual Studio have a built FTP in upload function, whereby you enter your FTP settings and 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.

“Classic” ASP and ASP.NET should really only run on Microsoft Windows Server operating systems. Some hosts do offer “ASP Hosting” running on Linux servers, using using the Sun Chilisoft ASP Environment. If you have developed your scripts in a Microsoft environment you may find it more reliable and less frustrating to host them on Microsoft servers 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 have chosed Windows Web Hosting in the past 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 host, unless you have used your own PC to develop Windows applications.

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