The first challenge you can expect to inevitably face being a new webmaster is purchasing a development & production platform for your personal business. We can quickly investigate several platforms - Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, OSX, etc), Windows, & Unix Os - by discussing the logical choices you can face before you make one last platform decision.
Programming Language
The programming language you select to formulate your internet sites & applications can assist you to better recognize the positives of, as well as obligations to, each platform. We elected to try PHP with the development tools, free developing community, the ways to access information / guides and vast experience there are in the language. For people like us, it meant the capability to tailor web applications & sites quicker than as we were using ASP. NET. I cannot hope to compare each language while they all have access to a broad lots of advantages & disadvantages that will be already widely discussed.
If you'd like to build ASP. NET (Microsoft's web language) web applications & sites, careers obligation to work with the Windows Server platform. Though there are a few ASP. NET support libraries for Linux / Unix web servers available, they neglect to offer complete support of your language and therefore are appropriate production applications or sites in the form of last option only. Quotes for quality products to create that have an open source language, like PHP, you will be free of charge any platform, even though the support per each varies greatly.
Type of Server
The kind of server plus the model of server processes you're looking for will likely affect your platform choice. Though most common server types (mail, ssh, ftp, web, database, etc) are supported cross platform, support and also gratifaction often vary between several process-to-process communication to general desired use. We run several server strategies to support our client needs and discovered that Windows' support for a few analysts was very similar to the kind we received regarding their other Systems; nonexistent in a few areas and slow on the general.
When in Doubt
If you rather brand new to most of the technologies, it's more comforting to make your selection dependent on pure statistics. Below would be the current (as of March 2011) report on leading web server statistics by Netcraft.
Vendor Product - Web Sites - Hosted - Percent
Apache - Apache - 179, 720, 332 - 60. 31%
Micrsoft - IIS - 57, 644, 692 - 19. 34%
Igor Sysoev - nginx - 22, 806, 060 - 7. 65%
Goggle - GWS - 15, 161, 530 - 5. 09%
lighttpd - lighttpd - 1, 796, 471 - 0. 60%
Linux can be a leading server main system, and runs the ten fastest supercomputers anywhere. Web giant Facebook uses Linux & PHP (and Perl). Records on a purely objective view are inclined to favor Linux.
Selecting a Version / Distribution
If you have chosen the Windows platform, there is not anything else to try regarding picking out a distribution, though overall cases you should purchase the latest production version available. If you choose the Linux platform, you will have variety of choices to choose between. Again, to help keep this text as concise as they can, I cannot cover the numerous Linux distributions (there are various articles available already).
When you want a Linux distribution you will most probably prefer to have a look at most popularly distributions. You can actually further streamline your alternatives by looking into making a choice on whether you expect admittance to the best repositories (libraries) vs. stability (how many years has it been tested), performance and hardware support vs. security and stability. Mainly because of the Unix philosophy, "Write programs that a thing and take action well", foreign exchange just about several distributions will come across your needs are.
In the completed, we selected a Linux platform; specifically the Ubuntu the gw990. Its well known because of its popularity being personal desktop option to Windows users, it is the most famous distribution of Linux. We selected the server edition of Ubuntu automobile traditional use on the web, its simplicity of use, and therefore the amount of technologies that will be held by its Debian based foundation. We selected a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) based server since it is straightforward code, very easy to deploy, you may develop locally, and loads of cheap and ubiquitous hosting.
Conclusion
Choosing the perfect platform can vastly affect your last product and development time-line. To consider your company, personal & clients' goals before rushing a platform into production. You might plan to setup several Virtual Servers (using VirtualBox or VMware) to run a test, side-by-side, the use of all according to your small business requirements. I recommended using free languages, frameworks, tools and servers with regard to their wide use, support, transparency, increased security and nature (reference Unix philosophy above).
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