I made a decision years ago that I am not sure people really understand the ramifications of so I thought I would right about it today.

All of my websites are hosted on Linux with an Apache web server. I would have gone with IIS on Windows but Apache really gives me a lot of control over my web hosting.

Why does all of this matter? Am I somehow biased towards free software or agains Microsoft? No, Actually I run nothing but Microsoft Windows XP and Vista at home and have not a lot of experience with Linux or Unix, in fact I am a Microsoft IT Support guy (not at Microsoft, just supporting Microsoft Windows servers and computers).

So why go with Linux for Web Hosting? Or Apache Web Hosting? To me this is not really an issue, in fact even with all of my tinkering with scripts and stuff I never have to go to the Linux level what I really want is Apache as a web server. The other option for web hosting is IIS otherwise known as internet information server that is bundled with Windows Server products.

I will try to show how I use Apache and why I like it here. If I want to install Wordpress or some other script all that I need to do is open up an FTP program and upload the files, I then go to the install or admin interface in a web browser and do the configuration right from there, one thing that I may need to do is change security on files but I also do that just from the FTP program. Using the FTP and the web browser is all that I need and because of this it is really easy for me to any admin without even having to be a computer genius.

On the other hand with Microsoft and IIS it is a little more difficult, even though a lot of the scripts can be ported to IIS it is never quite as easily as it is in Apache, stuff is just always written for the Apache web server and in PHP or CGI which are nativley supported by Unix / Linux and Apache.

I hope this helps. I have mentioned in the past that I use 1 and 1 for web hosting and if you have any comments on this please post them below so I can answer.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!