You may also be wondering what happens when a website is displayed in your browser when its content is displayed? In fact, if we want to go into the details of this process, it will definitely not be possible to summarize in several articles! But in this article, we want to explain the most important part of this process, which is the “web server”. Please join us to review the answer to the question “What is a web server or a web server and the types of web servers”

What is a web server?

Simply put, a web server is responsible for storing and sending the content of a website to the client who requested it. The requested content can be text, photos and videos or even information of an application. The most common type of client are browsers.

When you upload a site or click on a download link and download a file, the browser is actually sending your request to the web server of that site. Now that you are familiar with the concepts of web server, we will examine how the web server works throughout the article.

What is the use of a web server and how does a web server work?

A web server can be called hardware or software, or both that work together.

In terms of hardware, a web server is a computer that stores web server software and web component files, such as HTML documents, images, CSS style sheets, and JavaScript files. This web server is connected to the Internet and supports the exchange of information with other devices connected to the web.

In terms of software, a web server consists of several sections (at least one HTTP server) that control how users access files on hosts. An HTTP server is a piece of software that understands URLs (web addresses) and HTTP (the protocol your browser uses to view web pages). This server is accessible through the domain names of the websites it stores (such as iranhost.com) and delivers the content to the end user device. Popular web servers include Apache, Nginx, IIS and LiteSpeed.

At the most basic level, every time a browser needs a file hosted on a web server, the browser requests the file via HTTP. When the request reaches the web server (hardware), the HTTP server (software) accepts the request, finds the requested document (if not found, a 404 response is returned), and sends it via Sends HTTP to the browser.

Static and dynamic web server

To publish a website, you need a static or dynamic web server.

What is a static web server?

A static web server consists of a computer (hardware) with an HTTP server (software). This is called “static” because the server sends the hosted files “as is” to your browser.

What is Dynamic Web Server?

A “dynamic web server host” includes a static web server, plus additional software (often an application server and a database). This is called “dynamic” because the application server updates the hosted files over the HTTP server before sending them to your browser.

For example, to generate the final web pages you see in the browser, the application server may fill the HTML template with the contents of a database. Sites like MDN or Wikipedia have thousands of web pages, but these pages are not real HTML documents, but just a few HTML templates and a giant database. This makes it easier and faster to maintain and deliver content.

As mentioned, to get a web page, your browser sends a request to the server’s website, which searches for the requested file in its storage space. When it finds a file, the server reads it, processes it as needed, and sends it to the browser. Let’s look at these steps in more detail.

Web hosting files

The web server must first store the website files, ie all HTML documents and related assets, including images, CSS style sheets, JavaScript files, fonts, and videos.

Technically, you can host all of those files on your computer, but it’s much easier to store them all on a dedicated web server that

• Always running.
• Always connected to the internet.
• It always has the same IP address (not all ISPs provide a fixed IP address for internal lines).
• Maintained by a third party provider.

For all these reasons, finding the right hosting provider is a key part of building a website. That’s why you should look at the different services that companies offer and choose the one that fits your needs and your budget (the cost of these services can be free or thousands of dollars per month). Throughout the article, we examine communication via HTTP web server.

Some types of web servers

Apache Web Server

This web server has quickly become the most popular HTTP server due to its features and capabilities. Apache’s job as a web server is to process requests and provide website content. This web server is designed and developed for the basic Linux operating system.

Apache is an open source web server, which means that the main code of this software is available to everyone. This feature allows programmers from around the world to add their own modules to it and optimize it over the years.

One of the most important positive features of Apache is that it can manage large amounts of traffic with minimal configuration. Over the past decades, Apache has proven itself to be well-suited to working with a variety of platforms.

WebSered LiteSpeed

LiteSpeed ​​is a leader among other web servers in terms of performance and response speed. With a variety of plugins and features, you can use it to set up a web host. LiteSpeed, due to its special structure, can increase the performance of web hosting, and has the ability to serve thousands of users simultaneously.

LightSpeed ​​is fully compatible with Apache and can also load configurations, so it is usually installed next to it.

WebSered LiteSpeed

LiteSpeed ​​is a leader among other web servers in terms of performance and response speed. With a variety of plugins and features, you can use it to set up a web host. LiteSpeed, due to its special structure, can increase the performance of web hosting, and has the ability to serve thousands of users simultaneously.

LightSpeed ​​is fully compatible with Apache and can also load configurations, so it is usually installed next to it.

Web server Lighttpd

Lighttpd is an open source web server designed for speedy environments. At the same time, it performs well, flexibility and security in accordance with the standards of other web servers. The main specialty of this web server is managing a large number of requests simultaneously.

Web Server (IIS) Internet Information Services

IIS is a flexible, Microsoft Web server running on Windows systems.

IIS is highly flexible, and unlike Linux web servers, which only support certain vulnerabilities, IIS supports a variety of other frameworks and languages ​​such as PHP in addition to .NET Frameworks. In addition, IIS has a variety of features and extensions, high flexibility in processing and setting up a variety of frameworks.

What is HTTP Web Server Communication?

Second, a web server provides support (HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol). As the name implies, HTTP specifies how “cloud text” is transmitted between two computers.

A protocol is a set of communication rules between two computers. HTTP is a textual, stateless protocol.

What are the rules of HTTP web server communication?

HTTP provides clear rules for how the client and server communicate:

• Only clients can create HTTP requests, and servers can only respond to a client’s HTTP request.
• When requesting a file via HTTP, clients must provide the file URL.
• The web server must respond to each HTTP request with at least one error message.

In a web server, HTTP is responsible for processing and responding to incoming requests.

When receiving a request, an HTTP server first checks that the requested URL is associated with an existing file.

If so, the web server sends the contents of the file to the browser. If not, an application server creates the required file.

If no process is possible, the web server sends an error message to the browser, which in most cases is Not Found 404. (This error is very common and read about it in the article What is error 404).

Last word

In this article, we tried to provide an answer to the question “What is a web server?” There are many web servers, each offering different features depending on their structure. In the meantime, hosting companies use these facilities and provide web hosting services to their users. Some of these services are provided for specific purposes of the Website, such as blogs, wikis or online stores; Others, called Content Management Systems (CMSs), are more common, and some hosting companies offer CMS-specific hosting, such as WordPress proprietary hosting.

You are creating a dynamic website, you should choose a tool that suits your needs, and think about the right server, which starts finding the site server between different companies, and should be according to the resources and bandwidth and needs of the web server itself. Select Linux or Windows.