Cary Antill's Draft: Web Development - Server - Technical

Technical Considerations - Web Host

The web server environment is determined by the web-hosting service. There used to be 2 distinct flavors:

Linux(or other UNIX)/Apache Web Server/ PHP or Perl for processing tasks/ MySQL for database needs. Tried and true, open source, the original.
Microsoft Windows/IIS Web Server/ ASP.net for processing tasks/ MS SQL Server for database needs. The Microsoft solution.

This is no longer quite so distinct as Apache/PHP/MySQL can run on Windows and is often now available to sites hosted on Windows servers. Likewise ASP.net can run on Linux/UNIX servers. Here are some recent web server market sharefigures.

To simplify, think of this choice as PHP vs. ASP.net. Among developers, this is akin to a religious war (Microsoft vs. Open Source), but the fact is, that anything you can do in PHP, you can pretty much do in ASP.net, and vice versa. It comes down to what you have available from your web-hosting service and what your developers are familiar with. (For what it's worth, I am in the Linux(UNIX)/Apache/PHP/MySQL camp by background and inclination, and this is what has been available on the web servers I've worked on).

Questions, comments, or suggestions?
Send feedback to cary@antill.com
Page last updated 1/14/2006.