Forums in asp

kushty · 05-04-2007, 04:17 AM

Hi,

just want to ask you guys, I am adding a forum to a new website and want the forum to be indexed by the SE. At the moment I am looking at asp based forum as the web site is in asp.net. Do asp forums get indexed the same as php ones?

As I have noticed that when doing searches on say Google for various things many times a forum post comes up but they always seem to be php based.

Anyway any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Steve

Costin Trifan · 05-04-2007, 04:33 AM

There is no difference between php and asp forums. They all have the same structure.
The thing is that many forums owners have chosen php and not asp.
As you (might) know, there are a lot of free and easy to install php forums than asp...

That's all.

Owen · 05-04-2007, 04:47 AM

ASP.Net forums will get indexed in exactly the same way as PHP forums. As far as search engines are concerned it's just another webpage, doesn't really matter how it got generated.

With regards to your choice of package, if you're really after an ASP.Net board, have a look at CommunityServer (http://communityserver.org/) which is one of the better ASP.Net ones.

You will find however that there's more choice in the PHP space, as well as more mods, supports and templates for PHP boards. If the decision was mine (even though I'm firmly in the Microsoft space in my day job), I would prefer to go down the PHP route.

Hope this helps

Owen

kushty · 05-04-2007, 05:20 AM

Ok thanks costin and Owen for your advice. Is there a higher security issue with php though?

Costin Trifan · 05-04-2007, 05:28 AM

IMO : no way

Owen · 05-04-2007, 06:56 AM

Re exploits .. well it depends on how you look at it.

You'll find loads of PHP board exploits out there and hardly any ASP ones .. the reason is that there's hardly any ASP boards out there.

This is similar to saying Macs are more secure that PC, because there are more exploits for PCs then for Macs .. there's also substantially more PCs out there, i.e. it's more attractive for someone to write a crack for a larger user base.

Most of the exploits you'll find are holes that have been patched up in more recent versions. The morale of the story is, always use the latest version of any board software you decide to use. This advice applies to any other software you may have, blogs, stats etc

Costin Trifan · 05-04-2007, 07:03 AM

that's true, Owen

that's why many people think that Linux is more secure than Windows...

How many worms and viruses are out there for linux and how many for windows?

there's no need to say it!

Cheers!

Johan007 · 05-04-2007, 09:14 AM

My Movie Forum uses a Classic ASP (VB) driven forum from Snitz. I shose to use a Access db. ASP is ultimately more secure than PHP but you should not have much of an issue with PHP... its only a forum not a bank. Go with whatever language you know most about.

Quote:

Originally Posted by costin_trifan

that's true, Owen
that's why many people think that Linux is more secure than Windows...

No, what Owen is saying is that ASP is more secure than PHP. It is indeed more secure but not becuase it is less popular but becuase the way it is programmed. People love to hack M$ but they are simply more secure and that is why a banks and major organizations and online shops all use ASP.

Costin Trifan · 05-04-2007, 01:54 PM

I was just making a comparison about what owen has said about ASP and PHP with Linux vs Microsoft

Owen · 05-04-2007, 02:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johan007

No, what Owen is saying is that ASP is more secure than PHP. It is indeed more secure but not becuase it is less popular but becuase the way it is programmed. People love to hack M$ but they are simply more secure and that is why a banks and major organizations and online shops all use ASP.

Hi Johan,

Just to clarify. I'm not saying ASP is more secure than PHP. They're both scripted language and susceptible to the same type of exploits. For example, if inputs aren't sanitised, both languages can be usurped into, say, relaying SQL Injection attacks to a database, or allowing cross-site scripting ..

What I was alluding to is that fact that if you look at exploit engines, say Metasploit for example, you'll find a number of exploits for PHP based systems and only a few for ASP-based ones. This however reflects the number of off-the-shelf packages written in that language, not how secure the language really it

Hope this is clearer

Owen