Didn’t You See the Arrows?
(Posted 22:28:47 on 17th June 2007 by Rag)
I guess the first decision is which webserver software to use. There’s plenty to choose from, but by far the most common are Microsoft’s IIS and Apache. Well, my Ebay box came with W2K pro on it, so it makes sense to use IIS right? Well, not so fast. There are plenty of limitations with IIS unless you pay for the server license (only 10 concurrent logons) which may cause problems. Again, use your favorite search engine to look for IIS versus Apache if you want to read more articles about the difference.
It wasn’t these differences that made me choose Apache. I spent hours trying to find IIS to install it. IIS is free with your operating system – all you have to do is stick in your system disk and load it as an optional extra. Ah! That would be the problem. This is an OEM machine that comes with the software bundled, so there is no disk to stick in and install from. Surely then you just need to download it from Microsoft’s website. Hmmm, not quite. The website just tells you to stick the disk in and install from there.
Being a product of the Microsoft generation, it made me nervous to try something different. Going out the comfort zone, but if Microsoft aren’t going to make their product available then we have to look elsewhere. Nothing ventured, nothing gained – so I installed Apache.
(True story – many years ago [pre 9/11 I hasten to add] a group of us were traveling through an airport with shotguns that need to be declared at customs. The airport in question was small and a couple of the guys missed the “red channel” and walked through. When confronted by the customs official with "didn’t you see the arrows?" They responded with “Arrows? I didn’t even see the Indians!” Needless to say the customs officials were not amused and we all got to stay longer than expected in the airport whilst the entire group of 20 had their luggage searched with a fine tooth comb).
