Timothy
Parker Consulting Incorporated
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Setting Up a Windows Web Server Last column we decided to start our physical setup of Internet servers by employing O'Reilly WebSite Professional on a Windows 95 machine. WebSite Professional works just as well on a Windows NT machine, but for the sake of simplicity we'll look at Windows 95 for now. Any Windows 95 machine will do, really, as long as it has the horsepower to keep up with your expected level of Web site hits (remember the calculations we did a couple of columns ago) and has enough disk space and RAM. For these items, you'll need about 60MB disk space just for WebSite Professional, then add another 50MB or so for your content. RAM minimum is 16MB, but you'll be a lot better off with 32MB or more. There are two components we need to consider when setting up a Web server. First is the server software itself. This is done through a software package called an HTTP server. HTTP is the HyperText Transfer Protocol, the TCP protocol of the Web. The HTTP server receives requests from the Internet and services them, sending out Web pages on demand. The other component necessary to create our Web server is an HTML editor. HTML is the HyperText Markup Language, the code that is used to write Web pages. You don't really have to learn HTML. Most HTML editors are like standard word processors. You write what you want to appear on the Web page, including graphics and special links, click on a button, and it generates the HTML for you. Add-in to popular word processors like Corel's WordPerfect and Microsoft's Word also generate HTML from standard documents. You really only need to learn HTML if you are trying to do something fancy on your Web page. What is O'Reilly WebSite Professional? It's a single software package with everything you need to create, set up, and manage your Web server. Windows NT has Internet Information Services included, but it lacks some of these components (we'll look at IIS in the next column or two). WebSite Professional is also one of the easiest packages to get working, even for complete neophytes. The HTTP server included with WebSite Professional is robust and powerful enough to manage just about any Web server that isn't expecting millions of hits. It supports Java and Perl scripts, both of which allow you to add flash to your Web site. There's also an interface to a database, so you can continually update your Web pages with new results if that's important to you. Prior to installing WebSite Professional (or any other similar package, for that matter) you need to have some information readily available to allow the installation routine to configure the HTTP server properly. You need all your TCP/IP information (IP address, netmask, fully qualified domain name), details of the type of connection (such as whether you are using SLIP or PPP), ISP account information (login and password), and an e-mail address for your website administrator (usually the system administrator, but it could be any address). Installing WebSite Professional on a Windows 95 system is simple. Insert the CD-ROM and let the installation routine take its course. Supply the information you gathered when asked for, and ten minutes or so later, you have WebSite Professional installed. WebSite Professional lets you start up your HTTP server software one of two ways: manually from an application icon, or automatically when the system boots. With the first approach the server software is only running while you are logged in. With the automatic boot, the HTTP server is really a service that runs until the machine is shut down. The latter approach is preferable unless you really want to control access to your Web pages. Once the server software is running, you need to try and display an HTML document. WebSite Professional includes a few samples, so choose one in the proper directory using Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer. If your browser shows the content properly with no error messages, then the HTTP server is working properly. If there's an error message (and you checked the directory path is correct), the server is not running properly. Check the configuration and retry. A better test of the server software is to access the server from another computer on your local area network, if you have one. Use the server name and the address of the sample document, and if it appears, all is well. The syntax for calling up a document across a network can be a little confusing so follow the documentation carefully until you are familiar with it. WebSite Professional includes a self-test utility that can be run after testing access to HTML documents. The self-test tool will show whether everything is working properly, and the system's response to a complete suite of diagnostics. If that runs properly, then all that's necessary is to create your home pages, save them to a location the server knows about, and go on-line with your server! Writing your home pages is simple enough, as mentioned, with the included editors or by generating code from plug-ins from other documentation tools. If HTML generators are not included with your word processor, most companies have add-ins on their Web pages. You can use the simple WebSite Professional editors to come up with some basic web page designs, but remember that the simple editor-generated type of home page will not be as fancy as one coded in HTML by hand. It is a heck of a lot faster to generate, though. Later in this series we'll tackle HTML coding and design of Web pages, but for now, we have our WebSite Professional server up and running. |
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