Webhost needed for Classic ASP based sites

My biggest concern, if you are okay with the hosting limitations, maintenance, performance, features, etc., would be around the "bus" problem. If you were to get hit by a bus, finding someone to support ASP apps would be difficult and expensive as I know of no one who has used it in longer than most people's careers. Especially if it is written in VBScript, which hasn't existed since ASP deprecated, rather than JScript which was a bit more modern (but still gone, but more like a surviving language.) Most people in IT aren't even aware of ASP and think it is a nickname for ASP.NET.

Carnival Boy

Of course. The "bus" issue as you call it is a problem with all legacy applications. We still have dBase III applications in production.

I suspect VBScript is still far more common than you think, though.

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy said:

I suspect VBScript is still far more common than you think, though.

Common, perhaps, but not with developers. Only with legacy support IT folk, which generally isn't too useful as a resource if you need to support an ASP app.

Another concern is that officially, Microsoft hasn't stated that ASP "support" is going to continue. The last support update that was given was that Windows 7 "is" supported and that Windows 8 "will" support it. That doesn't mean that Windows 10 and forward won't, but Microsoft has not committed to it.

Carnival Boy

I'm not sure what your point is? Supporting legacy applications is a fact of life for most companies.

NetworkNerd

@Carnival-Boy said:

Of course. The "bus" issue as you call it is a problem with all legacy applications. We still have dBase III applications in production.

I suspect VBScript is still far more common than you think, though.

We run classic ASP sites here too. We have one on ASP.NET, but most of our intranet site pages are written in classic ASP.

Server 2012 and IIS should be able to support classic ASP.

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy said:

I'm not sure what your point is? Supporting legacy applications is a fact of life for most companies.

That they DO support legacy apps is a fact of life. But lots of companies do things that they don't need to. I'm not saying that keeping ASP in your case is the wrong decision, but keeping it because "lots of companies make bad decisions" isn't a viable reason for it. Yes, most companies support legacy apps. Most companies also go out of business. The two are not related at all. But what "most companies do" is never a good guideline to use.

One of the biggest benefits of a community like this is to be challenged to think about if something is the right way to do things. Is supporting a legacy app something you do because, why not? Or is it the best option? It is six of one, half a dozen of another?

scottalanmiller

@NetworkNerd said:

Server 2012 and IIS should be able to support classic ASP.

Yes, Server 2012 is Windows 8. The last version that Microsoft has stated will support ASP. They've said nothing about dropping support, they have simply only stated that Windows up to 8 would support it.

Carnival Boy

@scottalanmiller said:

Is supporting a legacy app something you do because, why not? Or is it the best option? It is six of one, half a dozen of another?

OK, if that's your point/question, the answer is, as stated above, because it's all I currently know and I'm the only developer here.

Am I planning to replace it with something else? Absolutely.

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy said:

OK, if that's your point/question, the answer is, as stated above, because it's all I currently know and I'm the only developer here.

Am I planning to replace it with something else? Absolutely.

It makes sense, I just wanted to be sure you were thinking about it in terms of "reasons that apply to your situation" and not just because lots of companies were doing it to (As your mom said, "If all the other companies jumped off a bridge, would you jump off too?")

The current risk is that support for ASP might end in as little eight years. Not likely that soon, but possible. Support meaning, in this case, that the last OS on which it is known to be able to run will leave support itself. Similar to if you had a technology that had to run on XP today. Can you do it? Absolutely. Is it supported? Absolutely not.

Leaving support is not the end of the world. ASP itself left support over a decade ago and was already not being updated for many years at that point. And obviously it still works and will for another decade at least. We migrated off in 2005. Took some work as we were 100% ASP at the but SO worth it. We've had a full decade of .NET now. Very thankful that we migrated early, we've reaped the benefits of ASP.NET for a long time now.

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy said:

Am I planning to replace it with something else? Absolutely.

I assume just ASP.NET?

Carnival Boy

Yep. And C#

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy said:

Yep. And C#

Excellent choices. That is exactly what we did. VBScript on ASP on NT 4 to ASP.NET and C# on Windows 2003. The latter is still in production.

JaredBusch

@scottalanmiller Thanks for completely derailing the thread in your rant about ASP.

That was not f*** [moderated] helpful.

If you read my OP, I specifically stated I was going to recommend a solution to migrate forward after I have everything back up and running as it was prior to being hosed up.

As far as I could tell most of those providers offer windows hosting with IIS. I was wanting recommendations for providers not a entitled rant about ASP.

Carnival Boy

GregoryHall

So why not try this on Azure.. you should be able to get a trial for 30 days to get the solution proven out.
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/?WT.mc_id=azurebg_us_sem_google_br_solutions_nontest_infrastructure_sitelink&WT.srch=1

I just logged in and you can still spin up a 2008 R2 SP1 image which is what I would recommend you try for this.

Report back if you need more.