Win Web Hosting

i am not a sysadmin but I have seen a few of them and know enough to tell you that there is no one answer to this question
What you need to figure out is
- What kind of applications do you want to host. Simple html? dynamic content? perl? asp? jsp? etc.
- Whats the network traffice you expect
- What is your preferred scripting language?
- How much money can you afford?
etc etc.
Basically, you need to compare based on those (and a few more criterion) and then make a call for yourself.
Assume that you really want a apace/myql/perl-python/ setup, your obvious choice would be linux
if you want iis/asp etc, go with NT

iis web server is the server on most windows platforms, it supports asp, dot net, mssql server, can also support (if you install) perl and php

apache web server is the server fo linux platforms, it supports, perl, php, mysql server and python

most ISP that offer hosting will use both servers, because they want to offer both platforms based on the clients needs

if you are just starting out to host a web site on the net and u are trying to decide what platform to use, most people go with apache because it is bullet proof, but it also means you have to learn linux (sure there are windows versions of apache but the are prone to windows problems)

if you want to make your life easy, you can go with IIS on you windows machine but you have to make sure you have all the security patchs installed, microsoft has relesed a software called MS Base line security checker, that can test the iis server and tell you how to tighten security, be very carfull, if you want a true iis web server for the inet, make sure you have a legit ms server operating system, make sure you are behind a firewall and that you have the right ports open and redirected to the server machine… be very carfull make sur you know what you are doing, you do not want to put a server machine on the net that has a lot of securty holes in it, hackers will break in and wreck havoc with you

appache is much more secure, (that is apache in the linux enviroment) but you still need to know what u are doing if you want to put a web server on the net

you may want to sign up for a free web hosting account somewhere on both platforms and play around untill you get your feet wet….

also, when I put my first web server on the net, and I was convinced that it was secure and bullet proof, I contacted the hacker community and gave out the ip address of the server, I asked them for help and i invited the to break in and try to hack the server

of couse I stayed glued to the machine for over a week, until I was 100% sure that it was hacker proof, only at that time did i start adding domains to it and I started to use it as a real web server

like I keep saying, becarfull and know what you are doinng,
also, don’t forget if you put a web server on the net to do web and email hosting, you will have to have a good unrestricted inet feed, the inet feed that i used for my server costed me over $500 (can) a month so I had to make sure the server was bringing at least that amount of money, you can do that if you host around 10 sites

again, becarfull, know what you are doing and make sure your server is hacker proof before accepting paid business !!!!