What is ASP?

ASP stands for Active Server Pages. It is a server side technology which is used to display dynamic content on web pages. For example you could write code that would give your visitors different information, different images or even a totally different page depending on what browser version they are using.

Below is an example of 2 links which both go to the same page "choice.ASP" but different backgrounds will be displayed depending on the link you click.

Which do you prefer?
blue
red

This is a very basic example. To learn what other things ASP comes in handy for have a look at our 'what can ASP do' tutorial.

ASP in itself isn't a language it is more a technology developed by Microsoft. ASP can be used with various scripting languages such as Perl or JScript though we will use VBscript as it is the default scripting language.

What do we mean by ASP is run server-side?

Well, when you request a page with the extension .ASP the web server looks for and locates the page on its hard drive. When located it then executes the ASP script contained in the page and sends back to your browser a pure HTML page. This ensures that an ASP page will work with any browser. This is what we mean when we say its a server side technology. All the ASP code is processed first of all on the server before being sent back to be displayed by your browser.

Have a look at the 'how ASP works' tutorial which includes diagrams for a more detailed explanation.