webservers
How to create a good working online database has become a longer process than I thought the first
time I putted myself into that silly task to do it by myself instead of letting people who really know about this
do it for me and pay them a fair fee for the work.
Sometimes I just cant avoid myself being curios about knowing the smallest details and I start to digg a
hole. Hmmmfff…after a while the hole is getting big and I would start crying to see my self give it up
halfway and try to crawl up from my hole without having solved the problem. I rather continue
diggin…..
I will not recommend anybody to host their own websites on a private PC, but if You really want to understand how the webserver works and especialy how the database works the lessons will be usefull if your goal is simply to learn about the technology.
So if You are a hole digger too You might start here with what I already digged so it was not done for nothing.
I tried to put the whole theory in a kind lessons so You might feel comfortable
about taking a lesson now and then when ever you find time.
Going trough this project I will use a lot of the definitions and explanations where I will refer to others. Thats the text in blue italic. I have been trying to descreibe the lessons a bit more colorfull and human than what You normally read
about IT related theory. Why descreibe software in black and white when it actually can maintain all the colors of a rainbow.
LSSSON 1 : What is a Webserver
Wiki says : “A web server is a computer program that delivers (serves) content, such as this web page,
using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. The term web server can also refer to the computer
or virtual machine running the program”
Dick deeper in that > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webserver
Well in other words look at the webserver as a program that store and give away different data just like a Mall store
and hand out different products to its customer. The only difference is that You need to pay for Your products in the Mall – the webservers are just free ! The web browsers like Explore and Firefox are the “transport companies”, they are able to find the data You need by using a socalled protocol – a set of rules that allow them to find, take and deliver the data to You. To make it a bit more complicated there are some different protocols that the “transport companies” can use depending on how tuff Your requirements are for the delivery. I will only mentions the 2 most common here. Normal delivery of data is using the HTTP protocol but if You dont want anybody to know what and where You ask Your data from You will use the encrypted HTTPS protocol.
Ok back to the webservers. There are one big webserver company and a handfull of small webservers in the world.
Apache is the gigant and can be seen as the Coca Cola of the webservers- It has 70% of the world market ( Coca Cola has also around that share of the soft drink segment) There are some smaller webservers Tux, Roxen og IIS but as Apache is so dominant I just took the decision to concentrate my studies on that. Im sure not a fan of monopol business and the smaller webservers might be just as good as Apache.
Note:
Apache was not developed by the famours Apache indians – The developer team from Illinois just took the name and the fender as their logo. Cool isnt it ?
Well starting with learning more about Apache I suggest You read the “product details” from the Apache HTTP product.
LESSON 2 : The My SQL GUI tools
So now when we know about the webserver its time to look at some nessersary tools that will make us able to communicate with our server and our database in a convenient way.
GUI is a computer term and stands for Graphic User Interface.
- User Friendly.
- Easy to learn (as a user).
- Easy to Use (as a user).
- Easy to implement (as a programmer).
- Uses a WIMP ( Window, Icon , Menu , Pointer ) environment
Graphical User Interface:
We can be glad that somebody made it easy for us to communicate with the PC and its database so noun Computing a visual way of interacting with a computer using items such as windows, icons, and menus, used by most modern operating systems.
If You did not already registrated on MySQL.com for a membership You better do it now as they have all the software a database designer can wish for…. and its free!
What we gonna need now is to download our GUI tools that will make us able to connect to the server and manage our database like making backups, restore and browse queries as the db administrator. Download it here, and we will install it later on.
I will also recommend You to read about GUI tools in details to understand more about the GUI tools package:
One of the best tutorials I found on the net is the one done by Siteground
So now we have the Server and the tool to manage our database and communicate with our server. What we actually
would like was that our visitors also would be able to communicate with us from our site and proberbly get some informations from or database and getting what we call a dynamic experience when they are visting our site. So to achieve that we also need to know about a way that will make that possible. There are some different ways its possible but again we will concentrate on the most known way and we can smile one more time becouse its also free — Its called PHP.
Lesson 3 : What is PHP ?
PHP, which stands for “Hypertext Preprocessor“, is a server-side, HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages. Much of its syntax is borrowed from some older programming langues (C, Java and Perl) with some unique features thrown in.
The goal of the language is to allow Web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.
In an HTML page, PHP code is enclosed within special PHP tags. When a visitor opens the page, the server processes the PHP code and then sends the output (not the PHP code itself) to the visitor’s browser. It means that, unlike JavaScript, you don’t have to worry that someone can steal your PHP script.
PHP offers excellent connectivity to many databases including MySQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL, and Generic ODBC. The popular PHP-MySQL combination (both are open-source products) is available on almost every UNIX host. Being web-oriented, PHP also contains all the functions to do things on the Internet – connecting to remote servers, checking email via POP3 or IMAP, url encoding, setting cookies, redirecting, etc.
Download PHP 5.3 here. Just download the software and we will install it later.
PHP Manual here
Lesson 4 : Installation
Well we now know about the main ingrediences to develope a database on a server. Now we will spend some time
around the installation. My main gold was to get my database running on a hosted server but I was recommended
to test it on my own PC first and thats why we gonna talk about this subject here. If You are not interested in doing any test on Your own PC You can ofcouse just jump to the next lesson. Installation always can go wrong and thats why i collected some links here that might help installation. In this case we will use some guidelines to install on a Windows Vista PC but You might also find Your OS version on my links.
From the earlier lessons You proberbly have downloaded what I recommended and the program files are now just waiting to be installed. In case You did not download them allready here is the list of software You will need. Download it in the following priority:
(All are freeware)
1) MySQL Community Server ver. 5.1
2) MySQL GUI Tools
3) PHP 5.3
4) Apache Web Server 2.2.14
5) Tip ! - If You use Explore as Your main browser it might be a good idea also to have the Firefox browser when it comes to testing of your database and queries later on. I suggest you download and install the FireFox 3.5.5 browser.
So now when You hopefully have all the downloads on Your PC, I recommend you to watch some videos and check some links before starting the installation. It might save You from some installation errors.
This link on Slideshare show how to install the whole package: Apache, MySQL & PHP on Windows Vista
If everything goes wrong in the single installation above there is also another way to get the installation work done. You can download the WAMP Package This automatically set up the system for you.
Comming Lessons:
LAMP and WAMP
Hosting Your database
Online installation