Re: Re[2]: A86: Re: new ideas...
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Re: Re[2]: A86: Re: new ideas...
Alright, here is the deal with web servers under Microsoft Windows:
Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS) came on the cd with Win98 and Front
Page. You can probably get it off their website for free, but I haven't
seen it. There are different versions of it. I think one also came on the
resource cd for Win95, but that was an older version. The older versions
also came with an FTP server as well, but the newer versions don't. I tried
it under 98 a while ago to do CGI development, using Win32 console apps as
CGI's. If the app crashed, I had to reboot the system to get it to run
again. I recommend staying away from this one, as it's very buggy and not
really worth using.
Windows NT 4 Workstation comes with what they call PWS, but it's really a
stripped down version of Internet Information Server (IIS). This one
includes the HTTP (web) server and FTP server. Actually, it doesn't come
with NT 4. It is on the Option Pack cd. I know it's the full version of
IIS, because it's the same size as IIS (PWS is much smaller), and it acts
exactly the same. But the catch is that it limits you to a very small
number of connections for both HTTP and FTP. And the Management Console is
stripped down, so you can't setup much stuff and can't create any virtual
web servers. Fine for testing, and probably easiest to setup (since the
management console is a GUI), but not really feasible for anything but a
small homepage.
Windows NT 4 Server comes with the full version of IIS (version 2). Service
Pack 4 (I believe) upgrades it to version 4, which is the current version.
This is web server that most NT boxes run. The management console is easy
to use, and the default for log files is pretty good (though I wish it'd use
names instead of numbers for the virtual site folders). Security is usually
handled through the standard NT user database, which can be good and bad.
It gets annoying sometimes when you know exactly what you want to do, but
can't seem to get to it through the management console. This is feasible
for running a large website, though development on the same box isn't as
good as Workstation, because Server is optimized for the background services
rather than forground applications. Though, if you have a fast processor
and a lot of ram (256 to 512 megs is a good start), it works fairly well if
you only have one box.
Now, what I run is Apache 1.3.9 for Win32. It's an excellent web server,
it's free and doesn't have any limitations (like number of
connections/users). Under Win95/98, you have to run it as a console app (I
think...haven't tried), but it's still great for testing. The install is
very small, too, compared to the bulk of PWS or IIS. Under NT Workstation
(or Server), you can install it as a service, so it runs everytime you boot
automatically. I run it on my box under NT 4 Workstation, and it's great
for development. Setting it up is more difficult than PWS or IIS, since it
uses a text file for configuration, but once you've spent a few hours
messing with it, it's not too bad. Once you're familiar with how to set it
up, configuration is (for me) a lot easier than IIS, because you can tell it
to do exactly what you want, without clicking through many layers of stuff.
You can get Netscape Enterprise Server for free as well. I only had it
installed for a few hours, so I can't say much about it, other than it's a
real pain to configure. The other day at work, I spent several hours with a
version trying to get it to run a single CGI as a NLM (Novell Loadable
Module...this was under Novell OS on a mail server), and after finding
several docs on Novell's site, was finally able to make it work. Could have
been done in 5 minutes with Apache or IIS. But many sites use it, so I
suppose it is good once (if?) you can figure out how to set it up.
There are some other servers like O'Rieley's Website Pro, but I don't have
any experience with them. If you have any questions about how this stuff,
feel free to mail me personally (off the list).
> Actually, Microsoft released something that said that the Web Server
> soft. that came w/ Win95 doesn't work properly anymore (updated
> software, etc). You can get it from their site, and it's sposed to
be
> free...
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