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 website owner and even purchase goods and services all over the internet.
The use of the Internet as a medium for integrating business across the globe with the help of Web-Based software applications has produced a 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 of hosting your website 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 kinds 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 have traditionally been believed to be very stable and robust. A website 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 a very insignificant cost, usually cost of distribution). Also, it has a full-fledged server and desktop applications that come free along with the OS. These server applications (such as FTP, Web Server, DNS Server, File Server, etc.) being free, are also very stable.
Easy to move between hosts: A website designed to be hosted on a Linux based web server can be hosted on a Windows web server easily, whereas the reverse is not always true.
Most widely used: Linux/Unix based web hosting is most widely used compared to Windows-based web hosting.
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 website 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 the common man.
