Website 1.1

by David Strom (Infoworld, 2/5/96)

The latest upgrade to a fine Windows NT and 95-based Web server has support for NCSA-style image maps, comes with an HTML editor, and supports server-side includes and multi-homed servers. For the money, this is one of the easiest and most capable web servers around.

Pros: Easy to setup, documentation is a classy book with lots of examples and tips

Cons: Remote administration difficult; Hot Dog HTML editor still 16-bit, so creating files with long filenames painful.

upgrades: free if 1.0 purchased after 10/1, $55 otherwise to upgrade from 1.0

Platforms: Windows NT 3.5.1, Windows 95

If you are new to the web, and even if you aren't, you need to check out O'Reilly's latest version 1.1 of WebSite software. If there is a smarter web server that is easier to setup and with better documentation, I haven't found it yet.

WebSite 1.0 turned some heads last fall, and O'Reilly has built upon a solid foundation. The server runs equally well on NT and 95, although for mission-critical applications, I'd recommend NT for sure. You can run it as either an NT service that starts up automatically, or as an application that is launched by a user. Why both? It is nice for testing purposes to have the latter, but once you go into production have the former. Smart.

It took me about 15 minutes from inserting the CD ROM to bringing up my web server -- and most of that time was copying files and looking through the documentation to see what was new to the product. And there is are many enhancements to 1.1: first off is the ability to support common image maps. Version 1.0 supported client-side image maps, a format that is not interoperable with the NCSA-style image maps that is in more common usage. Version 1.1 supports both.

Version 1.1 also comes with several useful and semi-useful pieces of software. Under the former category is Map This!, which is used to create image maps, and a copy of Spyglass' Mosaic 2.1 browser. Under the latter category is Hot Dog Standard software which has one significant drawback: it is a 16-bit application, meaning that all your HTML files will be named in the 8.3 DOS filenames. Sure, you could rename them after you are finished, but that is a big pain in the HTML. (Hot Dog's maker, Sausage Software, promises an upgrade soon to the world of 32-bit programs.)

But perhaps the best thing included with WebSite is a professionally-written book that serves as part documentation, part Web server and HTML tutorial, and part reference guide for the software. You would expect such quality from O'Reilly, who have been publishing Unix and other technical trade books for years. The book alone is almost worth the entire price of the software, and covers basic HTML, how to manage your web, create Common Gateway Interface programs and scripts, and other information that is rarely touched upon by competing products. For example, one chapter provides copious examples on how to write Visual Basic scripts that can interact with your web pages.

As with version 1.0, WebSite includes WebFind, a nifty and easy-to-use search utility and WebView, a graphical viewer that shows documents, links, and paths around your own web.

A big downer with WebSite is the tortured path you'll need to follow to remotely administer your web. Unlike Process Software's Purveyor, there is no HTML-based front-end administration tool. Instead, you have to muck around with Windows Registry and do some other loathsome tasks. While this is well-documented, it mars the overall finish of the product somewhat. Missing from the product are support for security enhancements, these along with a bundled copy of Cold Fusion's database/web software are coming in a WebSite Pro version promised for later this spring.

I liked WebSite and think it does a great job for both beginner and pro alike: one example of this is the effort that O'Reilly has gone into to support multi-homing, or the ability to host several different web sites on a single computer running a single copy of WebSite. Few web servers can match the elegance and ease of the product. Certainly, if you want to run your web server on NT, this should be on your short list.