The Success Package You Need

Most economical plans include PHP and ASP. PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and defined as a programming language that allows web developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases. Since PHP scripts sit inside HTML documents, you do not need a special editor to create pages, but your server and package that you choose must support and include PHP.

This scripting language is sufficient for building basic mini sites. ASP stands for Active Server Pages and is technology that enables you to make dynamic and interactive web pages. It uses server-side scripting to dynamically produce web pages that are not affected by the type of browser the web site visitor is using.

The default scripting language used for ASP is VBScript, but you can also use JavaScript. ASP runs best on Windows 2000/XPPro and NT4. When you compare PHP with ASP you find the following:

• PHP has inbuilt features as email from a web page and FTP;
• ASP requires additional components to provide same;
• To run ASP programs you need IIS installed on a Windows platform server, it's not free;
• PHP programs run on Linux, which is free;
• PHP generally uses MySQL, which is usually free;
• ASP requires purchase of MySQL;
• PHP runs on various platforms as, Linux, Windows, Unix and Solaris;
• ASP runs on Windows platforms;
• PHP runs faster than ASP.

For most mini sites you will find that PHP is suffice.

If you plan on collecting data from your visitors, having a CGI-Bin is useful. CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. It is a directory of a web server where you can store programs.

CGI is an interface of data exchange through which sending and receiving of data between the browser and programs residing in the server is organized. Normally, it is used to run Post Scripts.

Depending on what type of e-commerce site you run will depend on the package you want to purchase.