From reading previous posts I think I've narrowed my choice of hosts to Valuablehost, Venturesonline, or Hostingmatters. What I need to know is which of these may be suited best for me to learn to build ASP pages with a simple db using Frontpage?
Do I need to be on an NT server?
Do I need to have an account that has SQL?
How long have these host been in business?

Thanks for any input.

you'll pretty much need to be on an NT or 2k server for asp, though not 100% of the case, it's a good generalization.

RAQ's often come with chilisoft ASP though... with their notable advantages and disadvantages... not sure about frontpage extensions on a RAQ, but it's probably possible.

Ventures Online is a Linux only host, that much I can say, and as far as I know have been in business a decently long time, excellent company.

A FrontPage database? Or did you mean FrontPage Extensions?

If you want a "simple" FrontPage database that means Access, and that means you'll need a host that offers Windows-based hosting. With the right software Unix/Linux machines can handle ASP code, and almost all Unix/Linux hosts offer the FrontPage server extensions.

The built-in database functionality of FrontPage will only interface with a Windows database (at least I've never heard of it doing otherwise), and if that's what you want you need a Windows host. If you want to use FrontPage and ASP but are willing to learn another type of database (MySQL for example), you'll increase the choices of where you can host (although not by much). And if you want to use FrontPage but are willing to use PHP instead of ASP (a superior choice in my opinion) you can use just about any host out there (including the ones you mentioned).

I don't necessarily want to use Frontpage. I actually prefer Dreamweaver and then go in and do a little hard coding when I need to. I was interested in doing this project with FP because I wanted to keep it relatively simple (wanted it to actually work, I'm not much of a programmer). I'd rather not restrict my choices so much though. My FP book seemed to indicate that there was a way of doing it using FP webbot components without using Access and thus avoiding licensing issues. I thought this might mean that I wouldn't have to stay hooked to an NT or W2K server.
I've never heard of PHP, is there a good online resource anyone can recommend for learning a little about it?

If you need MS Access, you need a windows server.

If you can use MySQL instead of Access, then you could switch to a linux server, which I would highly recommend.

Not sure on a good PHP resource site, but the language is very similiar to CGI so if you know CGI, then it's pretty easy to learn.

Originally posted by tracyandskye
...
I've never heard of PHP, is there a good online resource anyone can recommend for learning a little about it?
http://www.php.net

Aloha

Do I need to be on an NT server?
well as others have siaid if you want to do anything with access as your DB YES
I have chilisoft and one thing to know any cool 3rd party asp components will not work with chilisoft it has its major shortcomings.

Do I need to have an account that has SQL?
NO ! unless you plan on having more than 10-20 concurrent connections then you will want to look into this and even then you may not need it if it is designed correct


How long have these host been in business?
Ya can do a whois lookup and get an idea how long they have had there url ???


also a note using DW try switching to Ultradev (try out a free demo) you are much better off using ASP with UD than FP go to the Macromedia exchange and download some of the plugins for asp adn you will be amazed how easy it is to build very nice dynamic asp pages etc...