Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : ASP -> php or don't bother?

[AndyB]

Looking for some advice.. I'm in the process of moving a client from the old host of my reseller accounts to the new one. Unfortunately, my new one is Linux only. One of my clients has a site (which I did for them) entirely in ASP. Their site is ~15 pages. Should I:

a) convert their pages from ASP to php so I can use them with my new host?
b) find a decent NT plan somewhere and buy it individually for them?
c) switch to a new host that allows me to sell both NT and Linux plans before my 30 days is up?

What are your thoughts?

[alucasa]

You might want to visit http://asp2php.naken.cc/

[AndyB]

Nifty! Thanks. One thing I'm concerned about is their customer's bookmarks pointing to the wrong place once the pages get new extensions. I could set up redirects, of course, but is that more trouble than it's worth? Therein lies my dilemma.

[Rehan]

It shouldn't be too difficult... Configure the site to execute files with the .asp extension as CGI or PHP (maybe you'll have to use .htaccess) and then put the redirect code in the appropriate files.

[m6.net]

I will suggest to get a reselling plan from any host which support both php and asp. Since it will help you get more clients. You can keep changing sites from ASP to PHP everytime. I don't think this is the rigght approach.

[SI-Chris]

You didn't indicate how much ASP coding there is, but you should probably consider modifying the code to PHP. It's more portable, which will help you in the long run should you ever decide to move the site to another host.

If it's a large site and converting to PHP would take a significant amount of time, you might consider purchasing a copy of ChiliSoft ASP (http://www.chilisoft.com), which will let you run ASP on Linux servers. Your hosting service would have to be willing to install it for you, but if they have other customers that would benifit from both PHP and ASP they might be willing to pick up part of the expense.

[AndyB]

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I think I will try the asp2php suggestion, as well as see if I can use an .htaccess file to tell Apache to treat the .asp files as .php files. That way I can avoid creating redirects.

Regarding the chilisoft solution, I also found this: http://www.nodeworks.com/asp, which is a modperl port of ASP to Apache. Maybe my hosting service will just install this (if they haven't already) and save me the trouble of doing the conversion. Thanks again to everyone who replied!

Andy

[SI-Chris]

I have heard that Apache::ASP has some bugs, but since it's free it's probably worth a try (again, assuming your hosting provider is willing to install it). Good luck!