By :
Dirik Hameed
When deciding on a development platform for website hosting the two most common options are either Window or Linux. The later is has much lower costs overall because it is open source but there is still support available from a large developer community. Large enterprise or big corporations might prefer the paid option since backup is guaranteed and large databases can be better managed.The long term requirement for any site should be considered before deciding on a development platform for website hosting. Any changes that would require a different platform in the future could be quite costly and lead to unwanted downtime. The choice of scripting language could also offer advantages for different applications so this could also influence the choice of platform for web hosting.ASP is more of a scripting environment than a language and is intended for use with Windows. There are also other options such as ASP.NET and C#. Their main advantages are that they are simple to use and allow for much quicker development. PHP which is commonly used for Linux is also easy to use even for beginners and the coding is available to allow for extended applications.There are also database servers which are specific to each platform but as with the development languages they are actually interchangeable. As would be expected though, the systems which would usually be used with Windows such as Oracle will incur an extra cost whereas mySQL is also open source. A common configuration for Linus is called LAMP and combines it with mySQL, Apache servers and PHP.Although the overall cost for using Windows is much higher it does make development much easier, especially when using a scripting environment like Cold Fusion. It offers highly intuitive as well as very powerful development. The cost is relatively high but for larger applications this might be outweighed by the fact that new applications can be prototyped very quickly and yet extended to enterprise level functionality just as easily.Linux is very often the best choice for small businesses concerned with costs. If set up correctly from the start it can allow for expansion and changes over time and even beginners could handle PHP. There should be no problems with upgrading if the code, presentation and content are kept separate. You also get the greatest flexibility because it is possible to use shared servers.Both options would be equally robust and offer good levels of developer support. When making a choice there might be a certain component which is required that might only be available from one of them so this might be a deciding factor. For Windows all the all the added components have to be paid for whereas with Linux they are available for free.Linux is generally suited to small business due to the lower associated costs but it still allows for a lot of flexibility and scalability. If the web hosting is for larger enterprise with a big database then the added cost of Windows might be worthwhile. The fact that only dedicated servers would also not count against it then.
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