Common web server software
Every server needs a software to transfer the documents to the client such as a webbrowser. The webserver uses the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to deliver webpages to the browser. Without a webserver there wouldn’t be any website on the web, that’s why this post is dedicated to the best known web server software: Apache HTTP Server and Microsoft Internet Information Services.
Apache HTTP Server
The apache webserver by the Apache Software Foundation is the most used webserver software on the internet. The licence is for free and the software is open-source. The name “apache” indeed originates from the Indian tribe.
The functionality of Apache is structured in modules. A very practical module is for example “mod_rewrite”. With this module you can do URL-rewriting, a common practice in search engine optimization (SEO).
Internet Information Services (IIS)
The Internet Information Services (IIS) developed by Microsoft, formerly known as Internet Information Server, is apart from Apache the second most popular webserver. In comparison to Apache the licence is proprietary, not for free but the software comes with newer Windows products like Windows 7. Unlike the Apache software, IIS per default comes with a beautiful GUI (graphical user interface) as we know it from other Windows applications.
Finally the question is whether to use Apache or IIS – or maybe a completely different webserver software? If you attach importance to load speed and stability, you’d probably tend to Apache, but you have to be familiar with Linux and command-line. With IIS it’ll be more convenient to use a GUI you probably know from the Windows operating system.