R
Randy Morgan
I like FP and want to keep using it, but my host is killing me. At
least, I *think* it's my host and not any fundamental limitation of a
Windows hosting platform vs. a Linux (or any "nix", I suppose, but I'll
just call it Linux for simplicity) hosting platform. So, I'm hoping to
tap the wisdom of the various Very Learned And Powerful People that
offer such sage advice in this newsgroup to validate what I think I've
learned in researching the matter.
I believe the following statements to be true, and would be grateful for
any comments either agreeing or disagreeing with them, or flat-out
explaining why I'm wrong.
1. You can build a good-looking, professional, data-driven, interactive
website on either platform.
2. You can have a secure and stable website on either platform. It's
the competency and interest of you and your host, not the fundamental
nature of the hosting platform, that matters.
3. You have to make a fundamental decision as to the hosting platform:
Windows or Linux.
4. If you want to use an Access database, you must go with a Windows
platform.
5. You should be deeply skeptical of the myriad websites that offer host
reviews and assessments. Some are genuinely unbiased reviews, others
are no more than shills for certain hosts (and possibly even owned or
operated by them), and, practically speaking, there's no way to tell the
difference.
6. FP can interact with either hosting platform just fine, thank you.
7. If you choose to go with technologies like CSS, PHP, or MySQL, FP
allows you to configure editors (e.g., PSPad, TopStyle) for those
technologies that are perhaps a little more helpful than FP or Notepad
as editors. With that said, there's nothing you absolutely cannot do
with FP.
8. You can register a domain name with one outfit and host it with
another, so if you host you like charges $20 to register a domain name
and somebody else charges $5, you may as well register with the $5
outfit even though you're not going to use them as a host.
9. Assuming ethical conduct on the part of your current host and
registrar, moving to a new host is not *that* big of a deal, but you're
going to have a period of up to 48 hours while DNS changes are
propagated in which you can't know which host is actually serving your
pages. If you allow visitors to make additions to a database (by, for
example, submitting a contact form), you may have some work to sync up
the databases after the DNS changes are complete.
10. If you want to develop ASP pages and use a Linux host, that host
must support something like Chilisoft, but even then you still can't
have an Access database.
11. It is possible on a Windows platform to have full support and
functionality (defined as whatever support and functionality you get on
a Linux host) for PHP and MySQL.
12. FP extensions are available for both Windows and Linux and work
equally well on both if the host manages them properly.
13. There's no such thing as a Windows host with both IIS and Apache.
It's one or the other (and probably will be IIS).
14. If you use FP and want to use PHP/MySQL you'll have to know more
about the underlying technology than you will if you use ASP/Access, as
FP can't manage PHP/MySQL for you anything like as well it can ASP/Access.
15. There's no reason a host can't give you access to the raw logs for
your site, even if you have a shared hosting account.
16. <potentiallyinflammatoryremark> The open-source (i.e., free code)
community offers more choices in PHP than ASP. You can certainly find
free ASP code, but the choices *tend* to be a subset of what's available
in PHP. </potentiallyinflammatoryremark>.
17. If you want a host the supports "everything", you're either not
going to find one or you're going to pay astronomical prices or you're
going to have to build and host it yourself.
18. When it comes to choosing a host, you do all the research you want,
but at the end of the day you won't know how you like them, or if they
misrepresented themselves to you, until you try them. "You pays your
money and you takes your chances."
OK, that should be enough to either bore or offend just about anybody.
Thanks to those of you that read this far!
least, I *think* it's my host and not any fundamental limitation of a
Windows hosting platform vs. a Linux (or any "nix", I suppose, but I'll
just call it Linux for simplicity) hosting platform. So, I'm hoping to
tap the wisdom of the various Very Learned And Powerful People that
offer such sage advice in this newsgroup to validate what I think I've
learned in researching the matter.
I believe the following statements to be true, and would be grateful for
any comments either agreeing or disagreeing with them, or flat-out
explaining why I'm wrong.
1. You can build a good-looking, professional, data-driven, interactive
website on either platform.
2. You can have a secure and stable website on either platform. It's
the competency and interest of you and your host, not the fundamental
nature of the hosting platform, that matters.
3. You have to make a fundamental decision as to the hosting platform:
Windows or Linux.
4. If you want to use an Access database, you must go with a Windows
platform.
5. You should be deeply skeptical of the myriad websites that offer host
reviews and assessments. Some are genuinely unbiased reviews, others
are no more than shills for certain hosts (and possibly even owned or
operated by them), and, practically speaking, there's no way to tell the
difference.
6. FP can interact with either hosting platform just fine, thank you.
7. If you choose to go with technologies like CSS, PHP, or MySQL, FP
allows you to configure editors (e.g., PSPad, TopStyle) for those
technologies that are perhaps a little more helpful than FP or Notepad
as editors. With that said, there's nothing you absolutely cannot do
with FP.
8. You can register a domain name with one outfit and host it with
another, so if you host you like charges $20 to register a domain name
and somebody else charges $5, you may as well register with the $5
outfit even though you're not going to use them as a host.
9. Assuming ethical conduct on the part of your current host and
registrar, moving to a new host is not *that* big of a deal, but you're
going to have a period of up to 48 hours while DNS changes are
propagated in which you can't know which host is actually serving your
pages. If you allow visitors to make additions to a database (by, for
example, submitting a contact form), you may have some work to sync up
the databases after the DNS changes are complete.
10. If you want to develop ASP pages and use a Linux host, that host
must support something like Chilisoft, but even then you still can't
have an Access database.
11. It is possible on a Windows platform to have full support and
functionality (defined as whatever support and functionality you get on
a Linux host) for PHP and MySQL.
12. FP extensions are available for both Windows and Linux and work
equally well on both if the host manages them properly.
13. There's no such thing as a Windows host with both IIS and Apache.
It's one or the other (and probably will be IIS).
14. If you use FP and want to use PHP/MySQL you'll have to know more
about the underlying technology than you will if you use ASP/Access, as
FP can't manage PHP/MySQL for you anything like as well it can ASP/Access.
15. There's no reason a host can't give you access to the raw logs for
your site, even if you have a shared hosting account.
16. <potentiallyinflammatoryremark> The open-source (i.e., free code)
community offers more choices in PHP than ASP. You can certainly find
free ASP code, but the choices *tend* to be a subset of what's available
in PHP. </potentiallyinflammatoryremark>.
17. If you want a host the supports "everything", you're either not
going to find one or you're going to pay astronomical prices or you're
going to have to build and host it yourself.
18. When it comes to choosing a host, you do all the research you want,
but at the end of the day you won't know how you like them, or if they
misrepresented themselves to you, until you try them. "You pays your
money and you takes your chances."
OK, that should be enough to either bore or offend just about anybody.
Thanks to those of you that read this far!
