Creating the network - locally

• October 6, 2005
• James Skemp
• StrivingLife, tutorials / guides

Today I'll be talking about how the StrivingLife.net network runs.

In my opinion, you can break the network down into two large parts; my computer and my host's computer.  There are certainly other things that come into play, such as the Internet in general, and the support of Google and the sites that it brings up in the various searches I (need to) do, but they are (almost) always applicable when you talk about the Internet.

Starting with my computer, I'm running Windows XP, Home Edition, and connect via cable.  This gives me a fast connection time, and an OS that will run most main-stream software available.  On my computer, as localhost, I've setup Apache (1.x, since my host isn't using 2.x), PHP, and MySQL.  I don't use MySQL, but I've found Apache, at the very least, to be a great tool.  More on that in a minute.

In addition to the above, I've also got some software installed.  For browsers, so I can see what my users see, I've got Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 1.0.6 (yes, I do need to update), Opera 8.5, and Netscape 7.2.  I've got a copy of Lynx sitting about as well, but I don't find myself using it all that much (same with Netscape and Opera, by the way).  Thanks to a couple copies of Knoppix, I also have access to Konqueror.  Thanks to a Web site, I have access to Safari.

The above are just different ways to see the same content.  For content creation I use HTML-Kit, although I have used FrontPage in the past (but, due to the way it messes with code, and the bloat associated with that, I've stayed away for quite some time).  HTML-Kit allows me to edit code, but it doesn't give me a user interface to do so (it's not WYSIWYG editor).  However, since I've got Apache, I can always see what I'm going to get before I publish it.

For uploading content, while HTML-Kit has an FTP utility built-in, I've found it to be less than perfect.  For that reason, I use CoreFTP, and have been experimenting with FileZilla.  I keep going back to CoreFTP, however, since it doesn't hide files like FileZilla does.

Note that while the last two paragraphs are correct now, in the coming days, weeks, and months, things may change.  Since I'll be using the program at work, and since I can get Studio 8 for $100 through my sister, I'll probably be moving to Dreamweaver 8 for my creation and FTP needs.

Continuing, a day ago I said that I had PDFs on my site, that came from Word.  So, I currently using Microsoft Word 2002 to write my articles, which I then print to PDF and re-save (to lower the size of the files) in Adobe Acrobat 6.0 (Professional).  Again, since I was able to get these cheaper than normal, I did so.

Finally, I believe, we've got Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 and XnView.  The former costs and the latter is free.  Until I got a digital camera, I was using XnView almost exclusively.  Now, however, I've been flopping between the two, since I was able to get APE2 for nothing, with my camera purchase.

That's pretty much what I've got going on locally.  Tonight I'll be talking about what's going on on the host's end of things.

~Jk