When it comes to the technology that powers your business, there are generally two prevailing attitudes about it: 1. I have specific demands and I\u2019d like to know what each piece of software is that\u2019s keeping my website online. 2. I don\u2019t particularly care what the software is, I just want the website to work with minimal headaches. Both of these attitudes are valid, but even if you\u2019re in the second camp, it\u2019s important to know what software is being used to power your website.<\/p>\n
There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to taking your site from a bunch of files sitting on a local computer to a website that\u2019s making you a lot of money. Whether you\u2019re working with a managed VPS<\/a><\/strong> or a dedicated server<\/a><\/strong>, you need to know your way around even if you\u2019re going to delegate much of the web work to another member of your team.<\/p>\n Many hosting environments are powered by Linux, which is an open source base for many different operating systems. You can also find Windows hosting if you\u2019re running proprietary software that requires Windows. Otherwise, Linux is your best bet when it comes to flexibility. Granted, not every specific piece of software that makes up your development environment is open source in and of itself, but many are.<\/p>\n Regardless of its truly open source status, each piece of software works together to create the environment you and your team will be working with every day. Some software allows customization and in many categories you have choices when it comes to which solution to go with. Let\u2019s take a look at the OS on the server itself, what control panels you can use to make changes, and what content management system you may want to install in order to generate your user facing content.<\/p>\n