? is open-source and free web that powers over 55 million websites globally. The official name for is and is ongoingly maintained and developed by the Foundation.
allows website owners and hosts to serve their content across the web, hence the name " ." it's one of the oldest and by far, the most reliable web servers. The first-ever build of was released more than 20 years ago.
An example of would be someone visiting a website, they enter a domain name into their address bar within the browser. The request is sent to the webserver which then retrieves and delivers the files, essentially a virtual delivery man.
At Snappy Host, we use and Litespeed as part of our main infrastructure. This allows us to offer the best of both worlds. It increases overall performance by compensating the weaker sides of one with the strength of the other.
The term can refer to hardware or , or even both of them working entwine.
Even though we refer to as a , it's not actually physical hardware, but rather a that sits and runs on the . Its job is to establish a connection between a and the users' web browsers. (Google Chrome, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Edge, etc). is all cross-platform compatible, it works on both Unix and Windows servers.
A better example of this would be when a visitor visits the " about us" page on a website, the browser will send an HTTP request to the , and will return the HTTP request with a response, fetching the requested files.
An is a great choice to power your website from, it's a stable and versatile platform. This does come with disadvantages which you need to be aware of.
Pros:
Cons:
( ) is one of the most popular web servers that will enable users to run their website without the hassle of too much going on, it's beginner-friendly and easy to use. It's by far the go-to choice for individuals and businesses that want their presence on the internet.
I hope this clears things up and you have an understanding of what an is.