Technologies for Website Building (Cont.)

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Web Server Software
The term web server can refer to either the hardware (the physical computer) or the software (the computer application) that helps deliver your website to the end users. If we are referring to the software on the server that makes your website work, the web server is the layer between the operating system and the rest of the cake. Two web servers that dominate the landscape of the Internet:

Company	Web Server Software
Microsoft	IIS (Internet Information Services)
Apache Software Foundation (ASF)	Apache

Operating Systems
For a vast majority of websites there are two underlying operating systems: Linux and Microsoft Windows. Linux is inherently open source (free) and Windows Server requires a license for purchase.

Operating System	Versions
Linux	Ubuntu, Red Hat, CentOs, SUSE, Debian, Fedora
Microsoft Windows

Web Stack
A stack is a combination of technologies or components needed to deliver a fully functioning website. Most websites fall into two categories: LAMP (Linux-based) or WISA (Windows-based). Both are very popular choices and you can’t go wrong with either setup. Most web developers are split between these two camps and build websites under Linux or Windows.

	Operating System	Web Server Software	Database Engine	Programming Language
LAMP (Linux-based)	Linux	Apache	MySQL	PHP
WISA (Windows-based)	Windows	IIS	SQL Server	ASP.NET