While there are some basic differences such as performance, stability and security, there exist common aspect in Linux and windows – although the web pages are designed in Windows, they can be hosted on Linux box or vice versa. Therefore there is no problem with either options of the web hosting systems. Nevertheless, to avoid any unforeseen technical problems, if any, are encountered, Windows designed web pages are hosted in Windows server, especially when some technical needs and performance is concerned.

There are no hard and fast rules to take a decision on the issue of web hosting. Both Linux and windows are equally good and efficient. The difference comes only while paying cost of domain registration and fee for web hosting. Here, in this aspect, web hosts are generally charges lower for Linux Hosting whereas Windows Hosting being a very successful platform, is proving to be expensive.

But cost along does not hinder users’ adoption, especially for those Corporates and MNC, as web presence is sometimes more towards branding. Further, if these corporates implement ecommerce system into their websites, the revenue could prove to be much lucrative compare to cost.

While for those who cannot afford to go for windows web hosting due to cost factor, the options could always be opting for Linux web hosting platform, even for launching online businesses. This holds good for all purposes to make their online businesses successful. There is no significant different in term of performance for both hosting platform.

Whether going for Windows or Linux Hosting, in most situation, the main aim of online businesses or professional educational institutions is to launch of a web site for WWW exposure in reaching out consumer market. This is easily and conveniently achieved by both Windows and Linux web hosting system. What we really should look for is actually on the service quality of the web hosting provider, in ensuring excellent and consistent performance and smooth running of the website.

If you want a total control in your web hosting account, you probably want to choose the unmanaged web hosting services. There are usually two types of dedicated hosting, the managed and unmanaged hosting service plan.

You could have a total control of your website administration in the server and you could also assign other administrator to take care of the technical side and take care of your web information in your server.

If you don’t have the expertise to take care of your server but still wants to have a freedom in manage it, you could ask technical person to do the tasks for you. This person will be managed your server and solve any problems that might happen in it. He will be responsible maintaining a good condition of server so it could be accessible by the people who visited your website.

The difference between the managed and unmanaged dedicated web hosting usually could be seen by the support system. While you’re using the managed web hosting, you don’t have to prepare any administrator on the server side because all of it has been taken care of by the web hosting provider. Meanwhile, using the unmanaged web hosting gives you a total control for the server side administrator. You could assign one of your technical supports to do it for you.

Unmanaged web hosting also allows you to increase your disk space. Some of the computer companies already designed the physical servers that you could use to configure your unmanaged hosting applications. Some of the companies like HP and
Dell provided you with a software program that could be run in the office network and also handle any development applications and web server.

If you don’t have any technical support and you want an easy web hosting service with the unmanaged web hosting, you could go directly to managed web hosting plan. Choosing this plan will allow you to get the same features that you’ll get in the unmanaged web hosting minus the headache in administrative side. It’s also a good choice because the costs that you’ll pay already included with administrative support and you don’t have to do regular update for your server because the web hosting company will do that for you.

The reason they close down the business is not only that. It’s usually caused by the lack of customer support for their web hosting business that make the customers regret their decision to choose this particular web hosting provider. And as you can guess, these customers move their website to other web hosting providers that are much more reliable and understand they need.

There are several types of web hosting that you could find today, these types are free web hosting, shared web hosting, and dedicated web hosting. These types of web hosting specifically created according to the customers need. As you can see, most of the web hosting provider creates their web hosting plans based on these three types. Of course they should give some fancy names for the plans, but basically, it’s all the same. These types of web hosting competed in the features, tools, supports, and prices areas. Different type will give you different features, different customer supports, and of course different prices.

Free web hosting

One of the favorite hosting plan for people who just start out in creating their first website. You could see that the person that use this plan often playing with the website builder a lot to create their first websites.

Some people use this free web hosting plan to test the web hosting provider that they want to purchase the premium plan. They’re playing with the tools and features that provided by the web hosting provider, and when they convince that this web hosting provider could help them with their website, they move on and purchase the premium plan.

Shared web hosting

Probably is the most common web hosting plan that being used by webmasters that have a small size or start up website. They choose this plan simply because it’s the cheapest and mostly contain some features or tools that they need.

They don’t really care about getting the bigger plan because they know that they could purchase the bigger hosting plan once their websites scale up. When the website that they have generate more visitors everyday and producing more money for them, they upgrade their web hosting plan to a bigger one so they could maximize the bandwidth usage and get more visitors to their website.

Dedicated hosting

Usually used by the big company that already have thousands of visitors’ everyday. Dedicated hosting will costs more than the shared hosting. For example, if the shared hosting costs you about $25 per year, the dedicated hosting could cost you $50 per month. This is a good choice for big company who wants to get maximum security for their website and get the complete control for it.

The best advice that you could get when you choose the web hosting plan is “choosing the web hosting plan based on your need“. If you only have about a thousand visitors a month, you’ll waste your money by getting the dedicated web hosting. However, if you have hundreds of websites that generate a thousand visitors a month per website, then dedicated web hosting is a good choice. No matter which plan that you buy, always think about what your website need first, not what you want from the plan.

JSP is a server-side language. It’s using simple tag-based codes that embedded into the HTML or XML pages to make it more interactive. By putting this code into your HTML or XML pages, you created a platform independent webpage.

It means no matter which browsers that your visitors use when they visits your website, they would see the exact same layout and contents. This is the biggest differences if you compare it with any HTML or XML webpage that has no JSP embedded codes in it.

By using the JSP web developers and designers could get more creative by combining JSP codes with the HTML layout to create a better user interface. JSP is quite different with other CGI scripts. If the CGI scripts require you to create your entire website in one program, JSP allow you to build the dynamic parts of your website separately. So, you don’t have to stick with the same program that you don’t even understand to operate it to create your entire websites.

If you’re one of the web designer that already tired repeating the process of creating the work that you already done, JSP hosting is the right choice for you. This JSP hosting will be very useful especially if you work on a team.

One of the benefits of JSP is that you don’t have to learn any Java language or program. The Java itself practically attached inside Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, so you could make it easier to insert Java codes into your HTML or XML pages.

Here are some of the tags that being used in the Java codes that you need to know:

- Actions: This is an XML-style tag that you can use to perform any slew of functions
- Declarations: <%!declaration%> Use this to declare methods or variables that you have throughout the page
- Expressions: <%=expression%> Expressions could be used to produce results which could be inserted into output stream
- Directives: <%@directive%> This is the instructions processed that should be done when the page is compiled
- Scriptlets: <%scriptlet%> This is a piece of code that can access any declared variables and execute it
- Hidden Comments: <–comment–> The notes that you put on the page and can’t be seen by client

CGI and Java Scripts commonly used in the website to increase the user experience of particular website. Java Scripts is a script or code that could be embedded into your webpage to manipulate the browser in the client side. While in CGI, the manipulation will happen in the server before it sends back to the browser. Before we figure out about the functions of these two, let’s get some deeper information for each of them.

1. Java Script

Java Script is a very common script that being used by the web designer to enhance the user experience from the client browser. Java Script could also used to change the page elements like webpage color, or changing the display. You could also change the navigation of your browser by using this Java Script. One of many benefits of Java Script is a faster loading page. Since the changing only occurs in the client computer and don’t require any access to server, user could see the results faster. However, the data that been put in this Java Script could be manipulated easily by users and it could doubt the data validation.

2. CGI

Common Gateway Interface, often abbreviated as CGI, is commonly used in website pages to process the data that been inputted by the user to processed in server. One of the benefits by using CGI is that the data processing is much secure because it processed in the server. If the process happens in client computer, the data could be manipulated directly by users. However, there are also disadvantages by using CGI in your website. One of them is a loading time that lasts longer. It’s because the data that needs to be processed will be sent to the server, manipulated in there, and then sends it back to the browser. This process will take much time to complete, especially when the server is busy.

The best way to use Java Script and CGI is to combine both of them. If you want your users to put any information that you intend to put in your database, use CGI. CGI is much safer to handle the data and it could have a high security. Java Script could be used for your users convenient. For example, you could give your users the choices to change the website background or navigation easily and fast. By combining both of these tools you could create a powerful website.

In the web hosting businesses, UNIX has been around for years and one of the best choices for a mainframe computer users. If you’re not a programmer or something, this platform might be not a good choice for you. If you like to do things easily and fast, you could check out for the Linux and Windows hosting platform.

If you want to compare the prices, you’ll see that UNIX based platform like Linux are much cheaper than Windows. It’s because they use a free version of UNIX (Linux) to build the web hosting, and thus minimize their costs. By doing this, they could offer you a cheaper web hosting plan. Also, since the UNIX hosting is open source you could find the source code easily and free from several open source websites. One of the benefits of UNIX hosting platform is that the web hosting companies often provide you with tools and applications that you could use for free.

The open source side of UNIX platform allows developers to build their own features that will aids to their goals. It’s also one of the reasons why the UNIX platform improvements are faster to release and the problems that may rise could be solved quickly. It’s because the developers work together in tweaking the platform to make it better.

As this platform requires skilled personal to operate and utilize, the main disadvantage that you’ll experience when you choose a UNIX hosting platform is that your web hosting provider probably only allow you to access your account by using Telnet or SSH. So, you need to have plentiful knowledge about UNIX commands before you could make use of the advantages. Just like learning other programming languages, you will spend more time to learn it the first time before you could do it with your eyes closed.

If you really considering to use the UNIX hosting platform, you need to measure your own technical abilities first. This will minimize the risk of developing problems in the future which you can’t solve. Choosing the best web hosting platform that suits your need will require you to look beyond the features and your budget.

ColdFusion is a very well-designed and crammed with so many useful functions and features for your website. With ColdFusion, you can create as many content as you like, and if you prefer, removing the time-sensitive content from your website automatically. This time-sensitive contents could be your event calendars or schedules. You could also organize your business reports and mailing lists easily. ColdFusion is already programmed to do just that for you. Another advantage of ColdFusion is that you could offer your website visitors to print any contents and customized the menus from their browsers.

So, how do you figure out if this particular website made with ColdFusion or not? Well, the very simple way to tell is by looking at the extension. If you see a .cfm than .php or .html in it, you’ll know that you’re dealing with ColdFusion.

ColdFusion itself is built by using Java platform. ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) helping the web developers to dealing with their website by maximizing the benefits of Java and minimizing the technical complexities. In short, you don’t have to know any Java language when you use ColdFusion. One of the benefits of ColdFusion is that it’s a tag-based language. It’s quite a same with XML or HTML language which make it easier for everyone to learn it.

ColdFusion is a server-side language. It means that any webpage that using CFML will be read, translated and converted by ColdFusion hosting companies before it’s being sent back to the user browsers. Also, the conversion process will have a result in the form of HTML page.

The ColdFusion web hosting is a bit pricey if you compare it with others. That’s why you need to make sure that your website intends to use all of the benefits and features that this ColdFusion hosting offers you. The web hosting companies who use this ColdFusion software usually use Windows NT operating systems. However, you could also choose to run this software by using Sun or Linux servers.

Just like choosing any other web hosting, you’re also need to consider the features that the web hosting companies offer you, starting from the disk space, bandwidth, costs, scalability, support, and uptime. When you choose a ColdFusion hosting, you need to add more specific features in your list, such as security, tag restrictions, ColdFusion version that they used, and the database support. If you failed to check on these features, you’ll get really disappointed when you’re facing problems that not even the support could solve it.

Because ColdFusion hosting is designed to make you have a good experience with it, you could always start from the starter package that ColdFusion hosting offered you. You could move on towards the larger package when your website starts to scaled up and need more hard disks space, bandwidth, and so on. ColdFusion hosting usually available in a shared, dedicated, and virtual server.

Linux/Unix, Windows NT, and Sun platforms are some of the operating system platform that widely used in the web hosting business. However, since Microsoft Corporation decided to release the Windows XP operating system platform, the market starts to move towards this option. Windows platform for web hosting widely known for it’s reliably, easy to use, and inexpensiveness.

Just like any other Microsoft Corporation’s product, this Windows platform for web hosting is created with user-friendly feature in mind to enhance the user experiences and minimize the learning efforts. That’s why this Windows platform for web hosting is easy to work with. They also give the users a familiar environment to use this platform so they won’t need any serious help in setting their first websites.

Users could also set their website easily because the Microsoft’s developers are being creative and helpful in creating the Windows Server Side operating system. As you probably know, the Windows NT platform is almost as reliable as the Windows XP’s one. But, in the case in Windows XP platform, there are so many improvements that you won’t find in the Windows NT platform. One of the both platforms familiarities is the technical and maintenance knowledge dependency.

Windows XP platform is a scalable and cost-effective. You could set up all functions in Internet Server with your Windows XP platform in a matter of hours, not days. To create an interactive websites, you could add some of the applications into your Windows XP platform like ASP, Perl, and PHP. ASP will allow your website to run the scripting in your server before presents it to the users. Perl is one of the best choices to dealing with information that being submitted from your website, processes it, and stored it. PHP will be very helpful in creating an interesting webpage for your users.

If you really wants to put some of these applications, and probably add some more, feel free to use the Windows XP platform, because it’s much easier to use and the user interface is probably more familiar to you if you already used the Windows XP’s operating system before.