Web Server.. I Hardly know her!

Leah

Aug 3, 2020

2 min read

So, we've gone over quite a few topics, but one important one that has been left out is a basic understanding of web servers!

These are the guys that keep everything in motion. They are responsible for sending the content you are viewing here. In a large company they are the backbone of the architecture for their Internet presence. Simply, they are nothing more than a file server that will respond to requests for files & sends them to the client. This is when the client's web browser will graphically render the tags, layouts & content of said file, giving you what you see on your screen! Server's now a days are a bit more advanced than they use to be. Granting them abilities like, coordinating the information flow between remote clients & local databases to interpreting scripts & streaming videos.*

When it comes to choosing what type of web server you are wanting you have plenty of choices, like, Nginx

[ pronounced :: engine-ex ] or LightSpeed, but the 2 most popular are : Apache HTTP Server & Microsoft Internet Information Service [ IIS ]

Click the image to follow to link for larger image.

With it being the easiest to set up and being included with all major Linux distributions it's no wonder that Apache is the most popular web server. Apache can be configured for virtual hosting and HTTPS. It also can be used to secure & limit database access, along with the ability to be extended to work with MySQL and other database \ scripting languages, even possessing the ability to act as a proxy server.

I am also going to try something new here and place the information that I think will provide you with a deeper look into specific topics underneath the 'Dig Deeper' heading. Then under the 'Resource' heading I am placing the sources.

Dig Deeper:

Resource:

Foster-Johnson, C.N. E. (2011). Fedora Bible 2011 Edition: Featuring Fedora Linux 14. [VitalSource Bookshelf]. Retrieved from https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781118085738/
Image --> https://blog.quadranet.com/web-server-infographic-apache-v-iis-v-nginx/

So I managed to get caught up on my project and went through and wrote instructions on how to install & configure a Mail, Anonymous FTP & Secured FTP Servers. It took me a while to get it altogether, but as far as I can tell These instructions should serve the users well.