Macintosh Web Server Preferences

Choices for Macintosh Web Servers

[EliteWeb]

When dealing with Macintosh webhosting, do you host with Macintosh service providers or just design on the Mac and host on a UNIX/Windows server?

With Mac OS X out on the prowl it makes it nice and easy to host websites on the Mac platform with OS X running and supporting Apache/mySQL/PHP

For the Macintosh Web Hosting here is a list of servers I have seen used or have used myself.

AppleShare IP
MacHTTP
Quid Pro Quo
Tenon WebTen (Apache web server for Mac OS)
WebSTAR
Microsoft Personal Web Server
EasyServe
HTTPd for Mac

Your preferences?
EliteWeb

[Macguru]

I never used a Mac for hosting any site. I read WebSTAR is pretty popular.

[john316]

Quid Pro Quo for comping. I prefer Linux/Apache for real hosting.

Web Server 4D is a feature packed web server if you must use a mac..

[mdg.com...]

[bateman_ap]

I have hosted a couple of sites on OSX Server using Apache in the early days and the problems I had with OS X Server meant I have simply taken it off and installed W2K Server that hosts a few sites, and a couple of Solaris boxes that run Iplanet. I would never ever use OS X Server in a production enviroment again, the service received from Apple when (a lot of end users) discovered ver serious bugs and tried to get them fixed scared me off them for ever.

Personally you can't beat Photoshop on the Mac, Quark et al but for servers/hosting forget it, even if their new rack mount looks seriously good!

[jimbo_mac]

john316, do you know where i could download quid quo pro.

I have been trying their website with no success, seems permanently down.

[john316]

try here...I don't where the company went, but the software is good.

[filedudes.cablelan.net...]

[rjohara]

Hooray to Brett for setting up this new Mac forum and congratulations to Macguru for being its charter moderator!

I've run my personal academic website on my Mac since people first had websites (I actually had a Gopher server running on my Mac before that), and from the beginning to this day I have used Chuck Shotton's wonderful and free MacHTTP. It is the archetypal Mac application: assuming you have a live Internet connection, just download, unstuff, double click, and in literally 60 seconds your machine is a webserver. The basic template files are there and you just edit them with a simple text editor (even Apple's old SimpleText will work fine). This personal site (my username here plus .net) has been running uninterruptedly on an old PowerPC 6100 under MacHTTP 2.4 (total size, 275K) for years without a hitch.

Now, this is a low-volume site (maybe 300 hits/day), but most sites on the web are. If you work for a school, college, non-profit org, or just do it for fun, there isn't anything easier or cheaper. That being said, I've just never run MacHTTP on a big machine like a G4 or something, and it may well be able to run a high-volume site perfectly well. It does have all the bells and whistles and can handle cgi, passwords, domain security, etc.; I just don't happen to use those so can't advise about them.

Chuck is close to releasing version 2.5 which is supposed to be a major upgrade. It's also open source if you're a techie who likes to poke around with such things. Pay a visit to [machttp.org...]

[jimbo_mac]

john316,

nice one - just finished downloading it.

[jatar_k]

At the last place I worked we had four servers set up with webstar. It was fairly reliable and pretty straight forward to use and configure. I was happy with it.

[rjohara]

As an historical note, WebStar is actually the commercial version of MacHTTP. I don't know the details -- maybe they are on the MacHTTP site -- but MacHTTP began as freeware or shareware, and then several years ago the rights to it were bought or lost (or something like that), and the commercial product was named WebStar. The original MacHTTP, which has always been free and available, is now being picked up again and further developed by its original author, Chuck Shotton.