As millions of users flock to the Internet for information and entertainment, many decide that they want to share information with the world also. The Microsoft Personal Web Server offers a way for users and corporations to publish Web pages on their own server, while the Web Publishing wizard offers the opportunity to publish Web pages on their own or on a third-party server. Their simplicity makes them perfectly designed for home users, schools, and corporate workgroups.

Key Features of Publishing

As your Web server needs grow, Microsoft offers a full range of Internet/intranet Web server products that run on Windows NT Workstation as well as the powerful enterprise-based solution, Windows NT Server.

Personal Web Server

Microsoft Personal Web Server turns any Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 computer into a Web server, enabling easy publication of personal Web pages. Easy to install and administer, Personal Web Server simplifies sharing information on corporate intranets or the Internet. It is designed for small-scale, peer-to-peer or small Web server usage.

The Personal Web Server, available free from the Web, is the latest member of the Microsoft scalable family of Web server software, supporting Web use from the desktop to the enterprise and beyond. The Personal Web Server offers the following benefits:

• Integration.The Personal Web Server turns a Windows 95-based personal computer into a low-volume Web server, making it as easy to share HTML and FTP files over intranets and the Internet as it is to share and print document files over a network. The software is fully integrated into the Windows 95 taskbar and Control Panel, allowing users to start and stop HTTP and FTP services whenever needed, administer the server, or change general options. Microsoft also designed the Personal Web Server to complement its larger and fully compatible Web server products, such as Windows NT IIS. The Personal Web Server is also fully complementary to Peer Web Services included with the Windows NT Workstation version 4.0.
  
  
• Easy to install, use, and manage. The Personal Web Server installs easily in minutes and includes an intuitive HTML-based administration utility that also supports full remote administration. It supports both user-level and local security, ensuring flexible and effective protection of sensitive corporate information. Users can set up the Personal Web Server to support Windows NT Challenge/Response encrypted-password transmission.
  
  
• Standards-based technology. Personal Web Server fully supports existing standards such as CGI and includes the open Internet Server API (ISAPI) extension to the Win32® API that is up to five times faster than CGI-based applications. This enables any user to take advantage of ISAPI and CGI scripts.

Web Publishing Wizard

Web Publishing wizard makes it easy to post Web pages on the Internet or an intranet by automating the process of copying files from your computer to a Web server. The Web Publishing wizard can automatically post to a variety of Web servers, and offers support for:

• Standard protocols: FTP, UNC, HTTP Post
• Third-party services such as AOL, GNN, Spryet Primehost
• System-independent protocols such as CRS, FrontPage Extended Web

The Web Publishing wizard also supports the following Internet service providers (ISPs):

• CompuServe
• America Online (AOL)
• Sprynet
• GNN
• America Online Primehost
• Microsoft FrontPage

Supported languages include:

• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Spanish
• English

ISPs who have their own protocol scheme for uploading files to their Web servers can write a custom WebPost Provider DLL and distribute it from the Microsoft Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/software/webpost/. For details on this procedure, send e-mail to WebPost@lists.msn.com expressing your interest in writing a provider DLL. Code for a sample WebPost provider is included in the ActiveX SDK.

What are the Benefits of Publishing?

• Increased communication. The ability to turn a Windows 95 or Windows NT computer into a full-blown Web server has intriguing possibilities. Workgroups can share information either with each other, or expose their projects to a wider audience, making sure that others are aware of their progress.
  
  
• Faster development. Personal Web Server supports many backend programming APIs such as CGI and ISAPI. This enables Web site developers to host their test pages with complicated engines such as forms or applications on their own PC locally, and then upload them to the Web server when they’ve debugged their code sufficiently.

How does Publishing Work?

Personal Web Server is ideal for developing, testing, and staging Web applications as well as peer-to-peer publishing due to its support for file sharing over HTTP and FTP protocols. Personal Web Server supports all ISAPI extensions and CGI scripts and is optimized for interactive workstation use. It does not have the system requirements of a full Web server such as IIS.

Personal Web Server supports multiple WebPost service providers such as CompuServe, Sprynet, AOL and GNN. The default WebPost Service Provider DLL can post to the most popular Internet servers, including the NCSA HTTPD, APACHE Web server and Microsoft Windows NT IIS. The Web Publishing wizard connects to the Internet Service Provider (ISP), determines the protocol needed to copy the files, and then uploads the files to the appropriate directory on the ISP computer.

To begin publishing on the Internet with the Web Publishing wizard, users do the following:

• Create a Web page using their favorite authoring tool.
• Sign up for an account with an Internet service provider.
• Use the Web Publishing wizard to copy the Web pages to the Internet.