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Servers and why do I need a local server

posted by Graham on Wed, 09/04/2014 - 11:28

To state the obvious, web sites (and pages) are held on a web server so if you do not have a web server then you cannot have a website! In simple terms, a web server stores all your pages and links them into the internet. For most of us, having our own server would be prohibitively expensive so we rent a server (or part of one) from what is called a Hosting Company. This type of server is referred to as a Hosted Server.

The title of this post begs the obvious questions of "what is a local server?" and "why do I need one?".

 "what is a local server?" - In computer terms when anything is preceded by the word "local" it means on your own computer, that is local to you; so a local server is a web server installed and running on your own computer.

"why do I need one?". There are two main reasons:

  1. While developing a web site you will make mistakes! You don't want anyone else to see your disastrous website (they may well never come back again) but on a hosted server it's there for all to see. On a local server only you can see the result.
  2. Most hosting companies have Terms and Conditions that actually ban the use of their hosted server for test purposes - your mistake could well lock-up (shut down) the server you are runnng on, which is bad for their reputation and for other customers who may be sharing your server.

I dislike the term "Best or Good Practice" as quite often it is merely someone's upsubstantiated opinion rather than a genuinely reasoned approach, but when it comes to using a local server then it simply makes good sense or even, and I hate to say it, "Good Practice" !

In a follow-up blog post I'll explain how to obtain and setup a local server absolutely free (we all like that!)

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