ISP, ASP, PHP.... Help! I'm sooooooo Confused!

What is an ISP?

An ISP (Internet Service Provider) is a company that collects a monthly or yearly fee in exchange for providing the subscriber with Internet access.

An ISP might provide dial-up service, cable, DSL, or other types of Internet access. Some ISPs are local while others are national. A national ISP will provide access throughout most of the nation, while a local ISP will only serve subscribers in a limited geographical region.

When looking for an ISP the initial consideration is the type of access desired. Some ISPs only offer dial-up access which is the slowest type of connection. If you want cable service, you'll be checking with your local cable TV provider to see if cable access is offered. For DSL service, you may have multiple choices - or it could be that DSL is not yet available in your area. Often this can be remedied with a call to the phone company to upgrade local telephone lines.

Every ISP has a privacy policy and Terms of Service (TOS) contract that subscribers must agree to before subscription will be accepted. The privacy policy will state what the company will and will not do with personal information collected at the time of sign-up. Name, address, and normally a credit card number are required. The privacy policy should also state under what conditions your personal information might be shared with third parties, government officials, or others. The TOS contract stipulates how you can use the service. For example, dial-up access is often sold as "unlimited access" but this is not to be taken literally. Dial-up accounts normally limit hours per month to 250-400, depending on the ISP. Truly unlimited access (leaving your computer on and actively connected to the Internet 24/7) is called dedicated access. Most DSL or cable subscriptions allow dedicated access.

The Terms of Service contract of the ISP will also state rules about hacking, protecting copyrighted materials, denial of service attacks, harassing other people, spam, compromising the service, and many other issues. These are as much for the legal protection of the ISP as to let potential subscribers know what the ISP will and will not tolerate. If you are planning on using web space provided by the ISP, check for limitations here too. Many ISPs do not allow commercial websites to be set up on their servers. This usually means that nothing can be sold from your personal webspace, including for example, a software program you wrote, original music, or any other item. ISP websites are normally for personal use only, to blog, post pictures, and so on.

Once you find an ISP that offers the services, privacy policy and TOS you can live with, you can sign up online through a public terminal, or call. From here all that needs to be done is to enter the ISP access number and a few other parameters into the networking software on your computer.

ISP services range in price according to the package offered, and type of service. Dial-up is least expensive, and perks will vary greatly between ISPs. Some offer multiple email accounts, others vast amounts of webspace, and still others discounts for paying in advance. DSL and cable companies will also differ, so carefully read through offerings before deciding. If you are getting an ISP other than cable, you will likely have choices. There are many websites that offer reviews from present subscribers of various ISPs, which might be helpful in making a decision.

What is ASP?

An Active Server Page (ASP) is an HTML page or application that includes one or more scripts (small embedded programs) that are processed on a Microsoft Web server before the page is sent to the user. An ASP is somewhat similar to a server-side include or a common gateway interface (CGI) application in that all involve programs that run on the server, usually tailoring a page for the user. Typically, the script in the Web page at the server uses input received as the result of the user's request for the page to access data from a database and then builds or customizes the page on the fly before sending it to the requestor.

ASP is a feature of the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), but, since the server-side script is just building a regular HTML page, it can be delivered to almost any browser. You can create an ASP file by including a script written in VBScript or JScript in an HTML file or by using ActiveX Data Objects (ADOs) program statements in the HTML file. You name the HTML file with the ".asp" file suffix. Microsoft recommends the use of the server-side ASP rather than a client-side script, where there is actually a choice, because the server-side script will result in an easily displayable HTML page. Client-side scripts (for example, with JavaScript) may not work as intended on older browsers.

TRANSLATION

ASP applications can be used to provide a website owner an easy way to update or change information areas on their actual website through an admin control panel, accessible from any PC with internet access. You do not need to know a thing about HTML, PHP, Java Script or any other coding language to use them once integrated into your website.

An example of an ASP applications would be an online photo gallery that will display a small thumbnail of a product, person, place or other thing. A site visitor can click on the thumbnail to enlarge the image size and display more detailed information about the image or product. Another example would be an small program that would allow a visitor to click on a calendar and review events for a specified date, or provide site visitors with a listing of current events.

ASP applications give a site owner an easy way, without learning a whole new coding language or paying for support services, of updating specified content on their website thus providing site visitors with fresh information.

ASP applications also give your visitors something to do on your website other than read static text. Since they are database driven, ASP Applications can be set up to allow visitors to select information that is pertinent to their needs. They can chose to display information in a specific category only, or from a specific date or time period of their choosing. ASP, quite simply, allows a website owner to have a page that does something other than simply displaying unchanging information between major site updates.

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