Web Server Hosting

In order for the web pages that you have stored within your web hosting account to be served to passing visitors, a web server is needed to handle the requests for web pages, which are sent to port 80 on the hosting server by default. A web server not only handles requests that are made for hosted web pages, but is also responsible for executing the code of a server side web page, if it is supported by the web server; whether the code needs executing or not, it is also the responsibility of the web server software to serve the web pages in code format to the visitor’s web browser. Once the code is received by the visitor’s browser, the browser then renders the web page as appropriate.
Web server software is available for the two main operating systems that are used within the web hosting industry – Linux and Microsoft Windows. The advantage of web server software being available for both Linux and Windows means that you can use either platform to host basic HTML web pages. The most popular web server hosting solution is called Apache, and is available for both Windows and Linux; Apache is free and is one of the reasons that it is the most popular web server hosting software in the world. The most popular web server for Windows is IIS (Internet Information Services), and is a Microsoft product that is bundled with Microsoft Windows Server and Windows XP Professional, as well as all editions of Windows Vista.

Your choice of web server will be dependent on your needs, which in most cases include server operating system and web application language as priorities. For example, IIS allows the serving of Microsoft specific technologies such as classic ASP and ASP.NET; in conjunction with a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database, these technologies can only be hosted on Windows servers and therefore served by IIS only. If you have developed your web applications using the PHP scripting languages with a MySQL backend, you have freer roam on your choice of web server; PHP is a technology that can be served by either IIS or Apache, and MySQL server can be run on either Windows or Linux.

If you have chosen to use a VPS or dedicated server, then you can choose which web server you want to install on your server. Since you are given your own dedicated environment, you can install more or less any program you want without affecting the performance of other user’s websites, unlike in a shared web hosting environment. There are several different pieces of web server software available for Linux server users, these include:
• Apache – Apache is the most popular web server available, and is used by many large corporations around the world, it is easily modified and in some cases is known as ‘httpd’
• LightHTTPD – this is a modified version of Apache, modified in the way that it uses up less server resources than a traditional installation of Apache
• Zeus – this is an enterprise level web server used by many of the world’s largest companies to serve web pages to their visitors.
However, the choice of web server for Windows servers is much less when compared to that of Linux web servers. There are two main web servers available for Microsoft Windows servers, those being:
• IIS – IIS is Microsoft’s own web server, and comes part of any Windows server installation, there are also desktop versions that come along with Microsoft Windows XP professional and all editions of Windows Vista
• Apache – Apache is also available for Microsoft Windows, although its Windows features are dramatically reduced, for example it is unable to run or execute classic ASP and ASP.NET web pages and scripts properly.

Web server hosting is available on all standard web hosting packages, such as shared web hosting packages and reseller web hosting packages. Dependent on the type of VPS and dedicated server hosting services that are sold by your web hosting provider, web server hosting can be optional on VPS servers and dedicated servers. With Linux web hosting you are normally stuck with using the Apache web server, and the IIS web server if you are on a shared Windows hosting package. If you have a VPS or dedicated server, you normally have a choice of web server.