Out of the lab, back to reality.
Once you've developed your incredible project on your personal server, you'll probably want to post it for the whole world to see. There are a couple of strategies for this, each of which makes different demands as you develop the project.
- You could just put your server on the Internet or a network connected to the Internet. This requires you to pay a lot more attention to security, and you probably want to be doing that even as you're setting up the system. You'll want everything as locked down and impermeable as you can manage, and you'll want to make sure that you have complete backups. (InfoWorld gave Linux high marks for use as an Internet server a few months backup, noting only a few small security holes, but paranoia is a good idea if you do this.) This is in some ways the easiest way to develop - it just costs you a PC - and you'll want a good PC to run any kind of public services.
- You could connect your PC server via SLIP or PPP or even ethernet to a public server and FTP your files over. Once you get them there, you'll have to check all of your security again, make certain that your files are in the right place, and test extensively. Again, the more similar you made your setup to the setup you'll be using in the end, the better off you'll be. It's a lot easier to move a public_html directory in one large chunk than 200 files from several different places, and you'll be happier if you're running the same server in public you were using in private. You can use the tar command to make this easier - it's even available as freeware for NT.
- What I'm doing now when I'm using Linux is using my client to transfer files. I already have the PPP connection set up on my Mac, so I transfer from PC to the Mac, then switch the Mac over to PANIX and post the files to the Hypertype account. It seems a bit inconvenient, but I haven't gotten around to setting up PPP for Linux and this has the added security advantage of never exposing my server to the Internet. Like it matters, but it's convenient for now nonetheless. All of the problems I just described above still apply - move the files, then test, test, and test again.
If you made it this far, you're probably pretty well set up and tired of thinking about this for now. I hope this proves useful to the Web developing world, and please send me any comments or suggestions you might have. If I'm doing something wrong, I'd like to know quickly so I can fix it. Nothing in these pages is guaranteed to work 100% on every machine all the time in every country for everyone. Test, test, test. 'Trust but verify.'
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Copyright 1995 by Simon St.Laurent. All rights reserved. You may print this document for yourself or others at no charge, but commercial distribution without permission is prohibited.
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