A web server is a space for you to house your website and entire database including apps, textual content, videos, images, and much more. It sends this data to the user who requests it when they want to gain access to your web pages and all the content that is on them. It is delivered to the device of the user once they search for your website and click on the link.
A hypertext transfer protocol is used by your web server to get in touch with your web browser. The hypertext markup language is used to make up the majority of your website content. At times it is dynamic or static. The dynamic content is devised using scripting languages including Ruby, Python, Javascript, and many more.
If you have a piece of content that is requested often, the cache is put into place to ensure an increase in the speed of their delivery. The whole system is referred to as web acceleration.
Another type of hosting is virtual hosting which includes a set of hardware and software that is capable of hosting a number of websites, or just one, as your needs may be.
Web servers regulate the number of resources each account uses so as not to let a single user monopoly over all of the resources for their own use, thus leaving nothing for the rest. A single server can easily satisfy the needs of a number of businesses and accounts.
What are the types of web servers?
The industry is filled with a number of web servers that all have their own pros and cons. Let’s check out the top 5 web servers including Apache, Nginx, IIS, LiteSpeed web server, and Lighttpd.
1. Apache
Apache is one of the most well-known servers in the industry. It was built to be an alternative to the UNIX web server known as HTTP. It is also open-sourced. The main attraction of Apache is the fact that it is compatible with all of the main OS and a variety of technologies.
Huge businesses mostly implement Apache to run their websites which also makes the statistics of them being hacked higher. It is slightly slower as compared to IIS and Nginx.
However, it has several advantages. It is a favorite to be used with technologies such as Python, PHP, and WSGI. Due to this, all the Windows operating systems use this. It has an inbuilt SSL certificate management and works well with a number of server techs.
2. Nginx
Nginx is the second most popular open-source server. It includes a proxy server POP3/IMAP. The main advantages of Nginx are that it offers incredible performance, uptime, easy configuration, stability, and minimum usage of resources. Nginx-created requests are not handled using threads.
It is dealt with by a framework that is extremely scalable and focused on specific events. It puts minimum memory to use to accomplish this. It has grown into prominence in the last few years and has increased its domains all around the world. They are sought after by a number of businesses globally.
3. IIS
It is a product introduced by Microsoft. It offers all the features that Apache does. However, it is not an open source and more than that including more personal modules becomes complicated along with the modifications as well.
Microsoft has built it and handles all of its management. Hence, it is extremely compatible with the windows OS platforms. Moreover, they offer great customer support so all of your problems are dealt with promptly.
4. LiteSpeed Web Server
LiteSpeed is a business-focused commercial-level server that offers features such as clustering and load balancing. They have asserted themselves to be both faster and offer better security as compared to Apache.
LiteSpeed is compatible with CloudLinux, which ensures that it can be used by the majority of web hosting services. Even most of the apps and OS are suitable to work with the LiteSpeed Web Server. While it is not an open-source server, you do not have to pay anything if you need to use it for your personal tasks.
5. Lighttpd
The Lighttpd Web Server is renowned for offering extreme safety and flexibility while being an open-source server. It was built keeping maximum performance in mind, along with high speeds. The company focuses on maximum security, compliance, and easy configuration.
One thing that sets them apart from their competition is their efficiency and competence they can manage huge loads and efficiently deals with any problems that might crop up.
Conclusion
Web servers are a necessity regardless of whether your online business is small or big, personal or commercial. You can host your website that can be visited by users who have an internet connection all around the world. We have explained the type of web servers that exist. We hope this has been illuminating.
For more information, visit our managed VPS hosting page.
