Hello!!
Im working on a website www.funspot.com please guide me what is the basic difference between ASP and PHP which should i chose and why to make a web site i have to promote the web site on search engine also.

Thanks
Laxy

The first thing is:

php is open source and (usually) free
asp is Microsoft

You need to find a host that supports either php or asp (Brinkster does both dunno how many others do).

Php seems to be optimized to work with mySQL and has specific commands to connect to that database. It does connect to other database using myODBC, but I don't know how good it is a that.

The logic and structure of the languages is very similar, but .php follows a slightly more c like construct (curly brackets etc).

Now that Microsoft is moving away from asp to .net I have no idea what the future holds for asp (obviously no further development). As far as setting up on a home system is concerned (to develope the website) you can work with asp if you have windows 95/98 2000 professional or XP professional. You can run php on just about anything (you might need something like Jana or Apache for XP Home though).

Is that of any help at all? I haven't gone into this very deep as it gets a bit boring after a while ....

I even have ASP and PHP running on my desktop.. One thing I hear from people who use PHP is that, they say, it has more robust built-in features. Not that you can't do it with ASP, but you commonly need a COM component for the equivilant functionality.

Now, this can be good and bad. You can't exploit what you don't have, right?

On the flip side, being that ASP is so widely used, holes can be easily found and hacked.

You mentionned above that PHP is well integrated with MySQL, fully agree but would like to add that ASP works very well with MySQl which is an open source VS SQL which can cost quiet a bit.
i have been using the 2 together for some time without a problem

PHP vs. ASP.NET

Both languages serve an extremely similar purpose: they contain procedural code which is executed by the web-server and whose output is sent back to your browser as "the web page." You cannot see the code that is executed; only its result.

The ASP language is (of course...) built on Visual Basic; runs only on Microsoft Windows servers; and is heavily dependent upon OLE Automation objects found only in the Windows world.

And of course, ASP is being deemed "obsolete" now by its vendor, who wants you to have (and pay for) new worlds to conquer.

PHP comes from the open-source world. It's loosely based on C, but (of course...) it was originally invented by someone who simply had a problem to solve, wasn't in it for the money, and didn't anticipate just how big his solution would become.

PHP will also far-outlive ASP, because it will never be deemed "obsolete" by its vendor.