| One of the important decisions you would need to | | | | hand would mean you have facility for filling up |
| make for your online presence is where to host | | | | forms, performing transactions, shopping carts |
| your site. If you do not know what hosting is, it | | | | and so on. Interactive features are usually |
| simply means that you need to upload your pages | | | | programmed in languages like ASP, ASP.NET, Perl, |
| on a web server which will publish them to the | | | | PHP, Python, or Java. If you are using ASP or |
| Internet. | | | | ASP.NET which are developed by Microsoft, then |
| There are companies that provide hosting | | | | you have no choice but to choose a Windows |
| services on a shared or dedicated basis and | | | | server since these languages do not work on |
| charge you a monthly fee. Basically, you rent disk | | | | Linux. However, if you are using PHP or Perl, then |
| space and bandwidth for your website. Now there | | | | it is possible to run your site on both Windows |
| is choice here - you can host your site on a | | | | and Linux. |
| WINDOWS based server or a LINUX based | | | | In terms of stability and performance, both Linux |
| server. And in this article, I will try to explain the | | | | and Windows match up evenly and it would really |
| pros and cons of each option and also help you to | | | | depend on the system administrator's expertise. |
| choose a cheap web site hosting service. | | | | However, Linux servers are known for having a |
| It does not depend on what operating system | | | | higher up time. If you are specifically looking for |
| you are using currently. If you are using a | | | | cheap web site hosting, then Linux is a better |
| Windows based computer to develop your HTML | | | | option. This is because Linux is a free operating |
| pages, you can as easily host the site on a Linux | | | | system developed by open source programmers, |
| server as on a Windows server. The same holds | | | | which makes the cost of hosting your site on a |
| true if you are working on a Linux platform. Once | | | | Linux based server lower. You can obtain more |
| you learn how to upload your site and make | | | | web space and bandwidth on a Linux server than |
| changes, you can be comfortable using any | | | | on a Windows server for the same amount of |
| server. | | | | money. |
| One of the main considerations is whether your | | | | One more thing, it is possible to port your site |
| site is mostly static or also has interactive | | | | from a Linux server to a Windows server but it |
| content. Static would mean that you simply have | | | | may not always be possible to do the other way |
| an information oriented website used to create an | | | | round. Therefore, it is a good idea to start with a |
| online presence. Interactive websites on the other | | | | Linux web hosting service. |