Why Linux Hosting is
Gaining More Presence than Windows Hosting?
By Ravi Chamria
Any person interested in publishing any data on the
Internet requires Web Hosting. Web hosting has been around for several years now
and has evolved from simple HTML pages hosting, small simple sites with a few
images into full blown web based hosted applications where end users can visit a
site, interact with the web site owner, and even purchase goods and services all
over the internet.
The use of Internet as a medium for integrating
business across the globe with the help of Web Based software applications has
produced wide range of web based technologies like ASP, ASP.NET, JSP, PHP, and
others. This choice has forced various options for web hosting now as HTML based
sites work equally well on both Linux and Windows platforms.
Web hosting platforms vary from different types of
operating systems. Microsoft Windows Server and Redhat Linux are just two
examples and probably the most well known web hosting platforms. So, what is
Windows or Linux web hosting and what are the advantages and disadvantages to
hosting your web site on either Server. And why now Linux is gaining more
popularity. Well, that’s just the answer isn’t it?
Linux platform has been developed by Community based
efforts and it has been rendered for professional use with the efforts of many
IT companies like Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, and like. This background of
Community development and open source nature of Linux Server and backup of
professional IT companies has made Linux platform more powerful, inexpensive and
secured.
The cost effectiveness in this competitive era is a
major boost that the companies required without compromising on the quality and
security of the product. Apart from ASP, ASP.NET, all other major web based
technologies work well with Linux. The virtually free distribution of PHP, MySQL,
PERL has reduced the costs of the website hosting tremendously on Linux Server.
At Sakshay, we provide both kind of hosting services but the advice to companies
requiring Hosting for HTML based websites, small applications like Recipe site
is to use Linux Hosting.
The menace of viruses, spamming and hacking is also
quite less with Linux Hosting. Firstly, this is due to the robust architecture
of Linux Server and Secondly, due to many cost effective softwares available for
protection on Linux Platform.
The following are the advantages of using Linux based
web server compared to Windows based web server:
Stable and Robust: Linux/Unix operating systems has
traditionally been believed to be very stable and robust. A web site housed on a
Linux operating system will have very high up-time (of the order of 99.9%). Of
course, other factors such as power supply, network admin skills, and network
load etc. also matter when it comes to maintaining the system uptime.
Low cost of ownership: The Linux OS comes free of cost
(or at very insignificant cost, usually cost of distribution). Also, it has full
fledged server, and desk top applications that comes free along with the OS.
These server applications (such as FTP, Web Server, DNS Server, File Server
etc.) being free, are also very stable.
User Friendly: When it comes to web hosting, it is easy
to host on Linux web servers. The process of uploading and hosting is almost
same for both Linux and Windows web servers. If you want to use a Windows based
tool such as Front Page for uploading a web site on to a Linux based web server,
make sure that the Front Page extensions are enabled. This is only required if
you are uploading using HTTP feature (http://www.yourwebsite.com) of Front Page.
Front Page also makes it possible to upload a web site using FTP. You need to
select ftp://www.yourwebsite.com for up loading using front page FTP option.
Note that if you select “Front Page Extensions”; during web site design, you
must enable Front Page extensions on a Linux web server also. These days, all
Linux web servers are coming with installable Front Page extensions, and this
should pose no problem for hosting on a Linux platform. You can use almost all
types of file extensions (or scripts) when using Linux web server. Commonly, the
following extensions are supported: .cgi, .html, .htm, .pl, .php, .shtml, .xml,
and others. Basically it means that you can host web sites that use different
types of server side scripts including .cgi, .pl, .php, and .asp (with plug-in).
Easy to move between hosts: A web site designed to be
hosted on a Linux based web server can be hosted on a Windows web server easily,
where as the reverse is not always true.
Most widely used: Linux/Unix based web hosting is most
widely used compared to Windows based web hosting.
Scalability: Scalability and future expansion are other
major criteria to consider while hosting an application. A web site is dynamic.
Usually, a web site starts with a few pages of html and grows over a period of
time to suit the customers requirements. It is preferable to design a web site
keeping this requirements in mind. A web site designed for compatibility with a
Linux/Unix based web server meets the scalability requirement easily without
making any site wide design changes.
Self Management of your website on a Linux Web Hosting
Plan with Sakshay hosting is made very easy with our Implementation of the Award
Winning Control Panel software by Sw-Soft called Plesk. Plesk is a web based
interface to your Linux web hosting account that allows you to create e-mail
addresses and mailboxes, view your web site traffic statistics, set permissions
on your HTML, PHP pages, MySQL, and more. We also provide Windows Hosting with
Plesk Panel.
So, all kudos to Linux and open source technologies for
making the technology affordable and within the reach of common man. More
Articles -
http://www.articlesworld.com
Dr Ravi Chamria is the CEO, Sakshay Infosystems Pvt
Ltd. He can be contacted at
ravi@sakshay.net or you may visit
http://www.articlesworld.com
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/