Best Web Server for Windows and learning various web dev?

davestar_delux · 30 Mar 2013 at 22:13

Hey, I am looking to just have a play around with a lot of things, databases, web design and some server-side programming - not sure what languages, might want to play with stuff like Hadoop, Splunk...

Just wondering what is a good web-server to get started with quickly? I am just running it on my Windows laptop that I use for my everyday web-surfing and everything else...

I've heard Apache is a bit of a memory hog? True or is it the best choice regardless?

Thanks for any input or suggestions.

uniQ · 30 Mar 2013 at 22:32

XAMPP or WAMP will get you started.

reflux · 30 Mar 2013 at 22:40

XAMPP is what I use. Very easy to install and comes with a range of tools.

lokkers · 31 Mar 2013 at 10:54

It entirely depends what you want to learn.

ASP.NET you're really looking at IIS on Windows. PHP, Ruby on Rails etc you're best running on Linux under something like Apache or Nginx.

Both routes are pretty easy to get set up though, and you can run Linux in a VM on your machine.

Deleted member 77746 · 31 Mar 2013 at 13:06

uniQ said:
XAMPP or WAMP will get you started.

This but to be fair getting a working install now for IIS/PHP/SQL is very easy. It's installs and checks to ensure parts are working fine.

What OS will you be using?

davestar_delux · 31 Mar 2013 at 13:13

My laptop is running Win7. I've done PHP 100 times, bit fed up of it.

I like the method where I can just write the page or two I'm making as opposed to RoR where I have to have a bit more awareness of the whole site but just not keen on the language PHP.

I might just go the RoR route though as I can't think what else I want to do.

Don't want to do any ASP or Windows specific as it's useless for my professional/work environments.

But I want to learn to make good Web UIs and work on backend data a lot as well. So I will be investigating and trying to learn lots of Javascript tech - I don't even know jQuery never mind Ext.JS, GWT and the hundreds of other things I hear about.

I would do a Linux VM but the laptop is a bit crummy at running them.

Deleted member 77746 · 31 Mar 2013 at 14:46

What I meant was that it's not that complicated to set up the environment to allow programming in certain languages.

Have you not got a spare pc laying about anywhere that you could put Ubuntu server on to play?

davestar_delux · 31 Mar 2013 at 15:20

Yeah I know, I mean I can set up Apache (with MySQL and some language) but was just wondering if that is still the best route these days or if there was a lighter-weight server.

I don't have any spare PC kit these days, used to have loads when I was more of a hobbyist and this is part of sort of going back to that. I am hoping to get a Raspberry Pi shortly so that would be perfect for all this.

marc2003 · 31 Mar 2013 at 16:21

davestar_delux said:
or if there was a lighter-weight server.

many years ago i used to dabble with this...

http://www.aprelium.com/abyssws/

not sure what it's like now but at the time i used it, it was great. i had it running php no problem.

lokkers · 31 Mar 2013 at 17:53

Nginx is much lighter that Apache, but more fiddly to set up.

For ~£5 per month you could run your own VPS in the Azure cloud. I've got one up there at the moment.

Deleted member 77746 · 31 Mar 2013 at 18:00

lokkers said:
Nginx is much lighter that Apache, but more fiddly to set up.

For ~£5 per month you could run your own VPS in the Azure cloud. I've got one up there at the moment.

Azure Cloud ? Any links?

lokkers · 31 Mar 2013 at 18:22

Sure: Windows Azure

Virtual Machines are currently in preview, so no word on pricing long term.

inogen · 31 Mar 2013 at 18:26

Learn how to do dev work on the web. Running stuff local is a hiding to nothing in the end.

Get a VPS of some sort. They're not expensive for what they are. Have a look at Amazon.

Deleted member 77746 · 31 Mar 2013 at 18:29

lokkers said:
Sure: Windows Azure

Virtual Machines are currently in preview, so no word on pricing long term.

Gets pricey once you start to add things like SQL e.t.c. Unsure how you got it to $5.00

lokkers · 31 Mar 2013 at 18:37

Because you can run SQL on the VM. Of course, the more services you add the higher the cost (as with all cloud providers). My Ubuntu VM will probably cost me £7-8 this month.

Also, I didn't say $5, I said £5. The base extra small VM is about £5.68 PM if I remember correctly.

EDIT: My projected bill for this month is £7.09. That's with an extra small Ubuntu VM (Apache2, PHP, Passenger and MySQL), two websites (free at the moment) and two small SQL databases.

Azure has a free trial for 90 days, and it's well worth checking out. The motherboard in my fileserver died last month, and whilst it's away being repaired I've spun up the VM and one website/SQL database to replace services that I was running on my fileserver. Doesn't get much more convenient that that!

kitkat9933 · 31 Mar 2013 at 21:56

Lamp on a Linux box is your best bet.

I have an N40l Micro-server running Server 2012 with a Ubuntu Server Running in Hyper-V cracking piece of kit that can be had for under £100. I run my website and personal cloud of the Ubuntu Server using Lamp.

aln · 1 Apr 2013 at 02:41

lokkers said:
Nginx is much lighter that Apache, but more fiddly to set up.

For ~£5 per month you could run your own VPS in the Azure cloud. I've got one up there at the moment.

Most folks would say Nginx is a lot simpler than apache, of course it's likely that you both have more experience with apache and need to put extra though into using Nginx is you're not running a static site.

@OP, unless you plan on _only_ being a programmer (stupid idea), learning the infrastructure is key too. Theres money to be made on windows of course, but I imagine if you're going to stick with windows, you should be using IIS and .Net related techs.

If you're interested in python, php, ruby or perl, you should probably run a VM. If you're using PHP, go with apache. Python and Perl are more questionable and you can probably skip apache altogether. I don't know a lot about ruby.