
Deployment
- Check usability.
- Get some folks to try it.
- Give them some things to try.
- Ask them what they think.
- Time them.
- Promotion
- Pay attention to target audience: Maybe you can pass out fliers.
- Search engines.
- Yahoo still lets you tell them about your site for free.
- Paid advertising.
- Getting a domain name.
- Purchase a domain under .com, .net, .org or
one of the others.
- Really a lease; you can't buy it permanently.
- Cost varies from $5 to $20 per year, depending on which TLD and
multi-year purchase.
- Various “registers” are authorized to sell domains.
- Getting server space.
- Like getting a place to live.
- Rent an apartment. Have to be more careful of the neighbors.
- Rent a house. More freedom.
- Buy a house. Even more freedom, and more to take care of.
- Rent space on a shared server.
- Hosting provider runs the server and keeps the keys.
- Limits on disk space and possibly CPU usage.
- Must keep clients from damaging each other's pages, accidentally
or deliberately.
- Users do not have administrative privileges.
- Ten to fifty dollars per month, depending and space and transfer.
- Rent an entire server.
- Administered by the hosting provider.
- Provider keeps the software and hardware working, and may provide
upgrades.
- Renter usually does have administrative permission.
- One hundred dollars a month, and far up.
- Own your own server.
- Buy and maintain needed software and hardware.
- Arrange for web connectivity.
- Run or contract for a DNS server.
- Register domain names.
- You're still paying your ISP for various services.
- Transfer limits.
- Depending on what you buy, there may be monthly transfer limits.
- Can be a pain if you suddenly become popular.
- Types of services.
- Unix and friends.
- Commercial Unix versions, but:
- Most often a free clone, Linux or BSD.
- Usually Apache server, which is also free.
- Despite being free, these systems are quite well regarded.
- Sandbox runs Apache on Linux.
- MS Windows.
- Which is better?
- Either can host web pages and images.
For static pages, it doesn't much matter which
you choose.
- Either can host dynamic content using CGI.
Various languages, depending on the system.
- Either can host Java language JSP pages.
- Windows has ASP.
- Interacts well with MS desktop software.
- Can write VB on the server.
- Apache provides PHP.
- Linux or BSD service is usually cheaper.
- License costs.
- Windows usually requires more hardware.
- MS would argue that Windows is cheaper if all costs are considered.
- Ease of use and personnel cost.
- Value of extra services.
- Existing expertise: The value of already knowing how to use one
or the other.
- Whichever you choose, there are some folks who will loudly
call you an idiot.
- Transferring files.
- FTP. Vulnerable to password snooping.
- SFTP, SCP. Secure versions.
- HTTP publishing.
- Ways to send a page to the server, if it supports it.
- Some providers have a specialized web form for uploading.
- The PUT operation, supported by some publishing software.
- MS Front Page extensions.