ASP stands for "Active Server Pages." PHP stands for for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor."
Both ASP and PHP are server-side scripting languages. That means that the browser that displays the ASP or PHP file does not need to allow scripts or even to support scripting at all. A PHP or ASP file may contain text, HTML tags and scripts. Some people find it easier to program ASP pages, because they generally use Microsoft Visual Basic scripts, though ASP also supports JavaScript. On the downside, ASP is strictly a Microsoft technology and as such only runs on Microsoft servers. If we build you a site for use on a non-Microsoft server, your active pages need to be written in PHP. PHP is free to use and open-source and will run on any server, including Microsoft's. Both ASP and PHP are efficient and run more quickly than equivalent client-side scripts. In addition to their uses in forms, PHP and ASP are commonly used to interact with databases such as MySQL.

Some of the benefits of PHP and ASP include:

• Dynamically edit, change or add any content of a Web page
• Respond to user queries or data submitted from HTML forms
• Access any data or databases and return the results to a browser
• Customize a Web page to make it more useful for individual users
• Faster and easier to use than CGI and PERL
• More secure since ASP and PHP code cannot be viewed from the browser
• Since ASP and PHP files are returned as plain HTML, they can be viewed in any browser

The following is an example of a small PHP script which will output which URL you came from, your browser, and your IP address: