Web Site Development - Web Development and Design Foundations with XHTML - page 412

provider is not necessarily the one to use. Word of mouth, Web searches, the local
phone directory, and online directories such as http://www.hosting-review.com are all
resources in your quest for the perfect Web host provider.

Hosting Needs
Small- to Medium-Size Web Site. Suggested requirements include unlimited data
transfer, 60MB or more of hard disk space, e-mail, and support of server-side scripting
such as ASP or PHP. This type of hosting is usually virtual hosting . The Web host
provider's server is divided into a number of virtual domains, and multiple Web sites
are set up on the same computer.

Keep in mind that over time your Web site will grow and your processing needs will
increase. Do you have access to your Web site log or will automatic reporting be
included? Does the Web host provider offer an e-commerce package that you can use
when you are ready? Does it offer CGI or database support? You may not need these
technologies now, but keep your options open for the future. Moving a site from one
Web host provider to another is not always an easy process. Choose a Web host
provider that most likely will meet your future needs as well as your present needs.

Also consider the operating system and Web server application that your host offers.
The UNIX operating system running an Apache Web server is quite common and very
efficient. However, if the skill set of your organization is mainly Microsoft technologies,
your staff will be more comfortable and more productive with a Web host that offers a
Microsoft operating system running Internet Information Server as the Web server.
Consider local Web hosting providers as well as national Web host providers in your
search.

FAQ

Why do I care about knowing which operating system my Web host
provider uses?

Knowing the operating system used by your Web host provider is important because it can
help you with troubleshooting your Web site. Often, students' Web sites work great on their
own PC (usually with a Windows-based operating system) but fall apart (with broken links and
images that do not load) after being published on a free Web server that uses a different oper-
ating system.

Some operating systems, such as Windows, treat uppercase and lowercase letters in exactly
the same way. Other operating systems, such as UNIX and Linux, consider uppercase and
lowercase letters to be different. This is called being case-sensitive. For example, when a Web
server running on a Windows operating system receives a request generated by an anchor tag
coded as <a href="MyPage.html">My Page</a> , it will return a file named with any
combination of uppercase or lowercase letters. The values MyPage.html, mypage.html,
myPage.html can all be used. However, when the request generated by the same anchor tag is
received by a Web server running on a UNIX system (which is case-sensitive) the file would only
be found if it were really saved as MyPage.html. If the file were named mypage.html, a 404 (not
found) error would result. This is a good reason to be consistent when naming files—consider
always using lowercase letters for file names.