WAMP is quite a well known term among Website Hosting Services industry. WAMP is acronym for the combination of Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Python/Perl. In this combination the first three are constant ones and for the fourth one it varies among PHP, Python and Perl. There may be a few occasions in which Python and Perl can be used together. The reason behind the popularity of WAMP is because it provides four important elements Operating System, Database Web Server and scripting application which are required for a web hosting server. When all these four elements are used as combined then such a usage is called as ‘Server Stack’. In this (WAMP) server stack you use ‘Microsoft’ Windows as an operating system, ‘Apache’ as a Web Server, MySQL to work as a Database and you can choose one from PHP, Python and Perl to be used as scripting language. WAMP it is totally related with Windows Web Hosting Servers and has nothing to do with Linux Hosting Servers. For Linux Hosting users there is ‘LAMP’ which substitutes ‘WAMP’

To adopt WAMP one needs to download ‘WAMPServer’ which is an open-source Windows web development environment. It comes with a service manager as a tray icon. This enables an easy management of the server and easy installation of multiple releases of Apache, MySQL and PHP as add-ons. With WAMPServer the installation process is automated and you can secure your setting files while making any changes over your web servers. You can experience a great flexibility with ‘WAMPServers’ as enabling and disabling services of WAMPServer is just a matter of clicks.

With a left click on WampServer’s icon, you will be able to:

• manage your Apache and MySQL services
• switch online/offline (give access to everyone or only localhost)
• install and switch Apache, MySQL and PHP releases
• manage your servers settings
• access your logs
• access your settings files
• create alias

With a right click :

• change WampServer’s menu language
• access this page

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Anyone is the world will not want their things to be kept insecure. If we say about the web applications, they are insecure too. If we spent time, money and efforts creating a web application why not a further step in protecting them. In the case of web application if you don’t secure it anybody can copy the work and the code. This issue was highlighted by two PHP developers and they thought of the software called Zend optimizer tool from the Zend Technologies.

This optimizer tool helps you to use the Zend Guard encoded files. If you don’t use this tool the code which is Zend guarded cannot be executed. If this code is encoded the visitor will be to interpret it, but won’t be able to see it. This tool enhances the performance of the PHP applications. The zend optimizer goes through the code generated by the standard Zend run time compiler and then it will optimize the code for the faster execution. Even though the optimizer runs every time the page is executed it has a very little or you can say negligible overhead. It speeds up the code execution process with 40% to 100 %. Additionally it will enable PHP to load  and execute the files that are encoded by using the Zend guard.

Zend Optimizer has a limited functionality to only interpret the encrypted the code. In actual to encrypt tit you need to use the Zend guard. This Zend guard will convert the code in the PHP format to the binary equivalent known as “Zend Intermediate Code“. When the conversion is over the new encoded files will take place of the original regularly coded PHP files. Zend guard is helpful in suggesting if any module or functions needs to be excluded from the encryption process for the better development time.

Lets see some of its specifications.

Supported Operating systems, Platforms.

Linux : Linux x86, Linux x86-64, Linux Power.

Solaris: Solaris Sparc 8, 9, 10, Solaris x86 9, 10.

Free BSD x86 5.x, 6.x

Windows x86 2000, XP, 2003.

OS X Mac Power

AIX pSeries 5.

Web Servers it supports:

Apache 1.3x

Apache 2.0.x (prefork mode)

IIS 5,6

Support for PHP versions:

PHP 4.2.x to 4.4.x

PHP 5.0.x, 5.1.x

Things to be ensured before using the zend optimizer. Zend optimizer will not run if the following PHP settings are enabled:

1. Thread Safety.
2. Enable Versioning

Zend optimizer is free and easy to use software. Mainly good hosting companies use this utility for the security of the web applications and code as explained above

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Some people are yet confused and aren’t sure about the Operating System (OS) to be installed on their servers. Let me clear that doubt, one can have any OS on a server, irrespective of the one they have on their local computing machine. It makes no difference if one has Windows on the local machine and wishes to have Linux OS on the server.

As we all are aware, Windows and Linux are two different operating systems. Windows is widely used on the household/office PC’s. Linux is a newer version of Unix OS. Both contribute to an excellent web hosting environment. Though, we cannot deny the Pro’s and Con’s of each.

An individual usually gets stuck when choosing the OS on the servers. Here are certain factors that may help you to get rid of this confusion.

COST:

Cost is one of the major determining factors when choosing an OS.

Linux is an Open Source OS, which means one does not need to pay the licensing fees inorder to have it. Hence, Linux is comparatively cheaper than Windows. Whereas, one needs to purchase the license of Windows inorder to install it on the machine. A single licensed copy can be installed on one computer. But, with Linux, once you own it, you can freely install it on any number of machines.

RELIABILITY:

Linux is reputed for its stability and reliability. Meaning, Linux server is much less likely to crash than Windows Server. Hence, these servers can offer more uptime to the web-sites hosted on it.

SPEED:

There is practically not much difference in the speed of both the OS, but there is marginally faster speed seen in Linux when processing basic web pages.

SCRIPTS:

Many CGI programs can be found over the Internet. Majority of the Perl scripts, developed on Unix/Linux servers.Most of them can be freely downloaded from the internet.

FUNCTIONALITY:

Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP) programming/scripting language are supported by Windows only. It enables oneself to build dynamic web-pages by connecting to Microsoft’s database such as SQL server or Access. Linux, does not offer any support to ASP and Microsoft databases, instead MySQL database is supported.

Today, more and more people are switching to Linux Web Hosting solutions as it is easy to use, more stable, open source, free updates are available and most importantly it is cheap. Hence, unless ASP and MsSQL database is required by a web site, Linux can prove to be a better choice over Windows.

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