I'm asking about your hardware, software, hosting, and connectivity rather than how your website is architected. (I'll save that for another question.)

Are you satisfied? Are you planning to make changes?

-- Terry Kearns (gradyproject@aol.com), April 07, 2001

Answers

We're running Mandrake Linux 7.2 on an old lab machine, slightly pumped up. It runs like a charm, stable and secure. This gives us the option of hosting pages, email account, and almost anything else a typical webserver can. I think the machine is a Pentium 166 with an 8 gig hard drive, and 192 megs of RAM. We also run a similar machine as a backup server in case the master server crashes. Our connection is a T1 line down to the school district mainframe. They handle all the offsite connection issues, as well as most in-school networking.

This is a very workable solution. It allows us the flexability to control our webserver, but not to worry ourselves about the rest of it.

Kevin Zanella, Sprague High School

-- Kevin Zanella (jouledax@home.com), April 08, 2001.

T-1 access is via the University of Texas department of Telecommunications (THENet). Novell provides Netscape Enterprise server for Netware free to schools. This gives us the flexibility to map rights and drive letters to individual folders on the web server docs directory so that teachers and others can maintain their own web pages with minimal effort.

-- Glenn Hymel (hymel_g@strakejesuit.org), April 18, 2001.

We are using the Xitami Web Server software from Imatix.com. It runs on a Windows 98 computer in our computer lab (Pentium II 400 MHZ with 256 MB RAM). It also acts as a student workstation and does a good job even when it is in use. We also have access to an Apache server at a local ISP. I use the Apache server as the main server for people outside the school but put the student and faculty pages and mirrors of the other pages on the Xitami. Our school has a dual ISDN connection to the Internet through ENA which links all the schools in Tennessee. (I also run a second Xitami server which I use for pages that I capture using OffLine Explorer. Teachers give me the URL for sites they plan to use extensively and I download them overnight. I put a link to that server on the Class Links page and they can access them at 100 MBS instead of Internet speed.

-- Bill Lavinghousez (blavingh@xtn.net), April 29, 2001.