Apache vs. IIS

WARNING: This post will technical and contain very little for the non-geeks out there. Please know you have been warned. For everyone else I will post a new picture of the baby soon.

Today I took a few serious steps toward building my web server.

The first step was to decide what server software I was going to use. While I am sure there are some from the Slashdot crowd who will shout me down for not looking at other alternatives I immediately narrowed the field to a choice between Apache and IIS. I am sure there are other good products out there if I just went over to Sourceforge and looked around. But I look at it this way: I’m reinventing the wheel from my point of view by hosting the site myself. Since that means building the server, loading all of the server side software, debugging the whole thing and providing all the content for the website I saw no reason to add to the confusion by using a bunch of nonstandard unsupported apps. That meant staying with the major tools like Apache or IIS.

In the end I decided on Apache and here is why. Apache is more secure than IIS, can run on Windows, Linux or OSX (if I had the money to go out and buy a Mac big enough to run it on. I don’t think my platoon of Mac Classics all slaved together would have the horsepower necessary(but it might be a fun project to try some time)) and since it runs under the GPL it’s free. And as we all know Free (as in beer) is a very good price.

One other reason for choosing Apache is that I’ve never used it before. I am no expert on IIS but I have used it a bit when I was trying to set up a self-serve Help Desk ticketing system at a previous place of employment. Apache is totally foreign territory and that means a learning experience. (You know, I used to cringe when my father, a teacher or some other elder on my life would tell me something was a learning experience. Now a days I tend to seek them out for myself and my kids. Funny how life works.)

My next decision was what OS to use. I foundered back an forth between XP and Linux but not for long. In the end I figured that if I was going to go in for a learning experience then I might as well go in all the way. That made Linux the obvious choice since all I was going to learn from using Windows was how to click ‘Next”.

With that I am off to find my install disks……