The Basics
A Web site consists of a body of HTML documents which reside on a Web server. The server delivers the HTML documents to users visiting the site. The look and feel of your site and its functionality is described by the HTML at the site, which is delivered by a Web server. This article will focus on the server part of this structure.
There are two broad types which will be discussed in more detail below: you can run a Web server at your home or office on a "spare computer," or you can avail yourself of the hosting services of a local Internet service provider (ISP).
Processing Power and Network Bandwidth
A Web server requires quite a bit of processing power. For this reason, if you plan on hosting your own Web site, you should expect to dedicate a system to that purpose. If you are editing a document on a system running Web server software and several people come to the site, you will notice a drop in performance as the Web server delivers the content to the users visiting your site. The size of the machine you dedicate to this purpose should be in direct proportion to the number of visits it must be able to handle.
A Web server at your home or office uses up bandwidth in your connection to the Internet. While you are working from home over an ISDN connection, that connection belongs entirely to you. If three people are connected to your Web site while you are working, then suddenly four people are on the same wire! This is an important issue when deciding whether you should host a Web site in-house or at the ISP. If bandwidth is already at a premium at your location, having a Web site will only use up more scarce bandwidth.
A Brief Overview
You can host a Web site on just about any computer you wish. Server software is available for just about every computer and operating system out there. Here is a brief sketch of the options and related issues which will be illustrated using specific business scenarios below:
The following scenarios use fictional (or maybe not-so-fictional) Web sites to illustrate the various options for hosting a Web site:
Kirsten's Cactus Collection: Home PC
Using the Personal Web Server software (for example) from Microsoft, Kirsten is able to set up a home page on which to tinker with HTML, and to display some scanned pictures of her cactus collection along with some links to other cactus-related points of interest. This solution is adequate for a simple set of pages (1- 50) which doesn't anticipate a large number of hits.
Liliana's Specialty Toothbrushes: Browse-only Catalog on a Shared Server
Liliana didn't want to use up her connection to the Internet by hosting her small Web site (50-100 pages) on her local PC. She does her development locally, using tools such as Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe PageMill, then uploads her content to her part of a shared server located at her local ISP's facility. Because of the demand for specialty toothbrushes, her site gets approximately 50 hits per day.
Cut-rate Lamp Shade Emporium: A Low-volume Catalog Application Running on Windows NT In-house
The Lamp Shade Emporium is really a subsidiary of the Lamp Shade MegaStore which already has a T1 connection to the Internet. The employees haven't discovered the Web yet, so there is plenty of unused bandwidth on the corporate connection.
The content developer, Karen, sets up her Web server using a Pentium-class PC running Windows NT and Internet Information Server (IIS) from Microsoft. This makes sense for her because she can develop her content locally and can interface with the local corporate database. Also, the graphical user interface for the IIS administration makes taking care of the server simple for non-gurus.
In this scenario, let's assume that Karen's venture is an experiment to show the viability of putting the entire Lamp Shade catalog online. This solution allows Karen, who is familiar with HTML and Windows NT, to leverage her knowledge and existing hardware on-site to get a site up quickly and inexpensively. Also, the set of Lamp Shades Karen is presenting in the online catalog is already contained in a corporate data base.
The tools to ease the development and deployment of data-driven Web sites on the NT/IIS platform are rapidly proliferating. Karen is able to use tools which interface to the database directly and display catalog information on the fly.
Linda's Pots: Medium-volume Browsing, Large Content
Linda is a potter who doesn't have much use for an Internet connection except to maintain her site which is located at her local ISP's facility. She creates simple HTML pages with images of her work and uses ftp to upload these pages to her site. The images are high-quality and, as a result, quite large.
Linda elected to host her site at the ISP because of the size of the content. When she located her site at the ISP, she put her content "close to the backbone." This means that a user visiting the site gets there directly instead of going through Linda's slow connection. Visitors to the site see better response time and are limited only by their own connection speed to the Internet.
Cynthia's Import CDs: Low-volume Dedicated, Database Retrieval
These import CDs are somewhat obscure, but have a dedicated following. Cynthia routinely gets around 1000 hits per day, plus she supports online ordering and credit card verification. There are only about 2500 CDs in the collection, which can be handled with a small, simple SQL database.
A site of this size can be adequately hosted on a variety of machines, but Cynthia doesn't care to own any hardware she doesn't have to, so she elected a dedicated system with her ISP. At Network Intensive, we use a SPARCStation 2 class machine for this size application. It provides Cynthia with a good value for performance and robustness, and provides us (the ISP) with a solid, maintainable platform. This route also allows Cynthia to painlessly upgrade to a more powerful computer if she decides to increase her inventory to 10,000 disks or include merchandise, etc.
Haley's Children's Books: High-volume Dedicated, Database Retrieval
Haley did an excellent job of promoting her site, so although she has relatively few books online (15,000 or so), her hit rate is high (100,000 hits per day). Exposure on television, in print, and on the Web itself has prompted many people to visit and browse around.
Haley's application is very similar to Cynthia's in that it uses a database and supports online ordering and credit card verification. Haley's database, however, runs on a high-end relational database. Use of a product such as this ensures a high degree of transaction integrity and very high, scaleable performance. At Network Intensive, we use UltraSPARC class machines for systems of this size.
Laura's Bike Parts Warehouse
Laura's site gets a medium-sized number of hits per day (5,000) and has a workstation available to dedicate to hosting the site. For her purposes, a co-location option makes the most sense. That is, her system is housed and maintained by her ISP.
By using a co-location scheme, her personal connection to the Internet is not consumed by visitors to her Web site, and she is able to leverage her existing hardware investment. Also, visitors to the site enjoy extremely good response time limited only by the visitors' own connection to the Internet.
The above scenarios and services are not all-inclusive. There are as many ways to host a Web site as there are interesting businesses to put on the Web. I hope I have given you some idea of the major issues to consider when shopping for an ISP to host your Web site. Your ISP sales representative can help you decide what makes sense for your company. See you on the Web!