Linux Hosting Exposed!

Apache is the most popular web server in the known universe; about 2/3 of the servers on the Internet run Apache HTTP Server, or one of its variants.  Apache is parallel to the Linux operating system in several ways and often is found running on Linux computers.  Apache is very popular among non-commercial Web sites. 

It is most commonly used on servers running Linux or Sun's Microsystems' Solaris.  Apache is one of the most prominent projects to emerge from the open-source community, a global collection of programmers who collaboratively create software that may be freely modified, shared and redistributed.  Apache is used in software from IBM, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and others, and the foundation presents these companies with a more corporation-friendly contact point for legal agreements and other interactions.

Apache is an open source project, meaning all the source code is available to the public and it is a highly configurable piece of software.  It is modular and you can add and remove features easily.  Apache is one of the most popular Web servers on the Web right now, and part of its charm is that it's free.  According to a Netcraft survey, Apache is the most popular Web server software, used on 63 percent of Web servers, more than three times Microsoft's 20 percent share and nine times iPlanet's 7 percent. 

Readers who have experience with other Web servers should be able to get up to speed with Apache here without a problem.  A web server like Apache, in its simplest function, is software that displays and serves HTML pages hosted on a server to a client browser that understands the HTML code. 

If you are looking for a good Linux hosting solution, Apache is supported by most of the hosting companies available. 

If you want to learn more about Apache, we recommend you the following books: 

Apache: The Definitive Guide (3rd Edition)

Apache Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for Apache Administrators

cPanel is a top choice control panel for hosts around the world.  It is a leading Web Hosting Control Panel Software supplying hosting automation tools to numerous data centers and customers all around the world.  cPanel is a user-friendly graphical interface that allows quick and easy access to all the features available to any particular hosting account and it is seen by many as the preferred control panel for Linux operating systems because of its quick loading times which is main due to the fact that the system is based mainly on Perl scripts meaning that it requires little to no database access at most times.

cPanel is designed for the end users of your system and allows them to control everything from adding / removing email accounts to administering MySQL databases.  cPanel is a next generation web hosting control panel system because it is extremely feature rich as well as include an easy to use web based interface (GUI).

Cpanel is so common because it's provided by the hosting places on a lot of dedicated servers and used for almost all web hosting packages that I have seen.

cPanel is one of the most advanced and yet easy to use web hosting control panels in existence and is designed for anyone to use and allows you to control the individual aspects of your web site.  It is written to work only on Linux servers but it is currently in use by more than 500 hosting organizations and over than 250,000 domains globally.

cPanel is usually interfaced with the end user via ports 2082 and 2083 with authentication accomplished through surfing to a specific web page and logging in.  cPanel is actually the best control panel ever, just because people can fix it rapidly, and use the cPanel forums to get most of their control panel. 

This is a perfect solution for users who want to save money and manage functions of their account themselves.  cPanel is not free, however a lot of linux hosting companies provide cPanel to their customers at no extra cost.

Currently cPanel is only available for use on Linux operating systems, but this is set to change from 2008 when cPanel releases it’s cPanel/WHM 2008 Suite for Windows 2008. 

While an experienced Webmaster can use most any control panel and get the job done, for the less-experienced person, cPanel is more user friendly.

PHP is an open source, server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language that is often used as a front-end for databases, such as MySQL.  It is an open source scripting language that is designed for Web application development and enables very simple scripting.  It is widely used for content management, customer relationship management, database access, e-commerce, forums, blogs, wikis, and other Web-based applications.  PHP is the technology used for many of the most scalable web applications, including Yahoo, Facebook and YouTube. 

PHP uses a blend of interpretation and compilation in order to provide the best mix of performance and flexibility to programmers.  PHP also has great output buffering features that further increase your control over the flow of output.

Many web developers today use PHP to develop portal frameworks, forums, and web applications because PHP allows them to create dynamic web applications with solid database connectivity.  However, PHP web development has been stymied by the lack of a powerful RAD visual development environment.  The existence of an active and vital open source PHP ecosystem with myriad of open source components and options makes the need for an integrated RAD development environment even more critical.

There is a large number of PHP users but there is a much small number of people who actually develop the PHP language and extensions.  You can check with your web host to find out if PHP is available on your hosting account.  If not, this means you do not have PHP support configured on your server and you should consult your web host or use one of the other platform options available but  most Linux hosting companies provide PHP support to their users. 

Creating innovative and new Web applications gets easier with PHP — the leading scripting language for Web application development.  It is open and easy to use, and gives you access to thousands of PHP-based applications and scripts available today. By the way, PHP is a recursive acronym which stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor.

The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.  The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.  When someone visits your PHP web page, your web server processes the PHP code.  After the translation into HTML, it sends the web page to your visitor's web browser.  PHP will allow you to reduce the time to create large websites and the creation of shopping carts for e-commerce websites.

Some recommended books on PHP are: 

Programming PHP

PHP Cookbook (Cookbooks (O'Reilly))