Old ASP Pages on a Windows Server

Pages that end in .asp

Look at the address bar on your own website. If the page addresses end in .asp, the site was written in classic ASP, a Microsoft technology from the late 1990s.

Sites like that were common in the early 2000s, often built by whoever looked after the office computers. Plenty are still online, barely changed.

Classic ASP needs a Windows server, so the site sits on a Windows hosting plan that has renewed every year since, without anyone asking whether it still fits.

The question usually comes up only when somebody wants to change the site and finds that the usual tools do not apply.

How to tell what your site runs on

• Page addresses ending in .asp, or .aspx for its successor.
• A file ending in .mdb, an Access database, among the site's files.
• A web.config file where a Linux site keeps an .htaccess file.
• A control panel that mentions IIS, Microsoft's web server software.
• Invoices that describe the plan as Windows hosting.

The third matters most to whoever works on the site next. Most instructions for redirects, caching and security on small sites are written for .htaccess, and none of them apply on Windows.

What a Windows server limits

The content systems most small businesses choose today, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla among them, are written in PHP and built mainly for Linux servers.

They can run on Windows, but plugins, caching tools, security add-ons and their instructions mostly assume Linux, so a developer spends time translating each one.

Redirects are the clearest case. On Linux they are a few lines in a text file; on Windows they go in a different file, in a different format, through a module the host has to provide.

It is all possible, just slower and more expensive at every step, which is the real cost of staying.

Code that nobody can edit

Microsoft replaced classic ASP with ASP.NET in 2002. The old version still runs on current Windows servers, but it has not changed since 2000, and few developers start anything new in it.

In a classic ASP site the words of a page usually sit in the same file as the code that builds it, so changing a phone number means editing a script.

There is a security side too. Much ASP code of that era fed whatever a visitor typed into a form straight into its database queries, so an attacker could type commands where a name belonged.

A site nobody has opened since 2006 has not been checked for that either.

Why the plan keeps renewing

Hosting renews quietly. The amount is small, the card is on file, and the person who chose the plan may have left years ago.

Hosts seldom raise it either. Windows plans often cost a little more than Linux plans, because the host pays for Windows licences, and over ten years that adds up unnoticed.

A worked example

A company that designs and builds exhibition booths, with a workshop in an industrial park, had its site built in 2005 by the contractor who looked after its office network.

He wrote it in classic ASP, with the project gallery pulling photographs and captions from an Access database. The Windows plan renewed every spring on the company card.

When the owner asked a web designer for a blog and a better gallery, the first question was what the site ran on. Nobody at the company knew.

The designer listed every page address, rebuilt the site in WordPress on a Linux plan, and moved the gallery out of the database into a new portfolio.

Each old .asp address, including those linked from trade show organisers' supplier lists, got a permanent redirect. The Windows plan was cancelled a month after launch, once the redirects were checked.

Every old address needs a new home

The step most moves get wrong is the page addresses.

Every .asp page has been linked to for years from directories, suppliers, old emails and search results. When the new site goes live, those addresses stop existing.

Each needs a permanent redirect, a 301 in developers' terms, to the closest new page. Browsers follow it, and search engines carry the old page's standing over to the new one.

Build the list before anything moves, from the server's files, the pages in Analytics and the links in Webmaster Tools. Addresses with a question mark, such as a gallery page with a project number, each need a rule.

What else lives on the plan

A hosting plan is often more than the website. Email is the usual extra: mailboxes on the Windows plan need their own move, with someone ready to reconnect phones and laptops.

There may also be a database behind a quote form, a client login area, or PDF price lists that other sites link to.

And check who controls the domain. Closing a hosting account should never take the domain or the email with it.

When moving is worth it

A move costs money once. Staying costs a little extra every time anything changes.

The right moment is usually when the site needs real work anyway: a redesign, a content system so staff can edit pages, an online shop, or pages that work on phones.

Google's change to rankings in phone searches begins on April 21, and a classic ASP site that fails on phones is almost always a rebuild, not a repair.

The server can be a prompt too. If the host says yours still runs Windows Server 2003, Microsoft stops issuing security fixes for it in July.

The counter-case

Windows hosting is the right home for some sites. A booking system or client portal written in ASP.NET and tied to the office's Microsoft software may belong exactly where it is.

A small site that works, that nobody edits and that has no redesign planned can also wait for its next rebuild, if the host confirms the server is kept patched.

Otherwise, find out what the site runs on, and plan the move for the next time it needs real work.

The order to do it in

1. Check your page addresses for .asp endings.
2. Ask the host which Windows version the server runs.
3. List everything on the plan, email included.
4. Export every old page address before the move.
5. Rebuild on current software on a Linux plan.
6. Point each old address at its nearest new page.
7. Cancel the old plan only once everything checks out.

Step four is what protects the standing the old site earned. A redirect can only be written for an address someone listed, and once the old plan is cancelled, its file list goes with it.

Asking which machine the plan actually lives on is covered in your account on the host's oldest server.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.