Windows Web Hosting

In a Windows Web Hosting environment a web server will typically operate using Windows Server 2003. The Windows Server operating system in and of itself does not appear any different on the surface from the versions of Windows most people are familiar with but if you dig a little deeper you discover that Windows Server offers a vast array of services and features simply not available to other versions of Windows.

The key service in Windows Hosting is known as Internet Information Services or IIS. It is IIS that allows Windows to manage the files, code, and information associated with a web site. It is possible for IIS to manage a single site or many different web sites with completely different domain names and content.

Windows Web Hosting is not the only technology available in the hosting industry. Linux hosting solutions are also widely available to consumers. Even if you’re only a casual user of the Internet that visits a limited number of websites then you almost certainly have visited pages using both Windows Web Hosting as well as Linux Web Hosting but the real question is did you ever stop to think about what sort of operating system the server you visited was using?

The primary difference between Windows and Linux Hosting is which technologies they support. ASP is a proprietary scripting language for creating web sites that is only supported on Windows based hosting. Linux supports a very similar scripting language to ASP called PHP and while PHP may generally be said to work better in a Linux environment it is also supported in Windows, unlike ASP on Linux.

If you are using neither ASP or PHP but instead are writing pages using standard HTML coding then neither you nor the person viewing your website will ever be able to tell the difference between Linux and Windows Web Hosting.

But as you are the person who wishes the host a website, it may be important to you to understand the principals of how web hosting works. This does not mean you have to learn about servers or become a coding expert but a basic understanding of the principals of web hosting can help you make choices concerning your web site.

All websites are created using some form of code. There are programs out there that permit you to create professional looking websites without knowing any code but in reality what is happening is those programs are doing the coding for you based on the content you add and the options you select.

When a person visits a web site a series of actions take place on the server that hosts that web site and then ultimately the code contained in that page is transmitted in one form or another across the Internet to that person’s computer. Once a person’s computer receives the code from a web site it will then be translated in to a format that a can be read by everyone.

Learning the code needed to create web sites will always be helpful for people who wish to create them but there are a number of programs available today that work almost the same as a word processing program. The hidden power of such programs comes from the fact that the program is creating the code for you behind the scenes and when you upload the file to your website it is actually formatted with some type of code to make it work properly on a web browser.

This may seem complicated and in truth it is actually even more complicated than has been explained so far but by this point you should have at least some idea of how a website works. The important thing to remember if you are starting a web site is that you should not be intimidated by new ideas or terms. If you are confused about something then a quick trip to your favorite search engine can help.

Windows Web Hosting From 3Essentials