Copyright ©1996, Que Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without prior written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Making copies of any part of this book for any purpose other than your own personal use is a violation of United States copyright laws. For information, address Que Corporation, 201 West 103rd Street, Indianapolis, IN 46290 or at support@mcp.com.Notice: This material is excerpted from Running A Perfect Web Site with Apache, ISBN: 0-7897-0745-4. The electronic version of this material has not been through the final proof reading stage that the book goes through before being published in printed form. Some errors may exist here that are corrected before the book is published. This material is provided "as is" without any warranty of any kind.
Chapter 01 - The State of the World Wide Web
In the six years since Tim Berners-Lee unleashed his graphical NeXT application, "WWW.app," upon an unsuspecting public, the World Wide Web has grown into the standard networked information infrastructure. (See http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/History.html.) Its graphical interface and hypertext capabilities have caught the fancy of individuals and the media like no other Internet tool in history. Businesses, schools, government and nonprofit organizations, and millions of individuals are flocking to the Web to promote themselves and their products in front of an audience spanning the entire planet. Millions more are using the Web on a daily basis as a tool to conduct business, get informed, be entertained, and even form virtual communities.
It's difficult to watch a sporting event, a commercial, or even the news without seeing that increasingly familiar http:// - telling us of yet another enterprise on the Web. Because of the Web's popularity and its cost-effectiveness as a marketing tool, the World Wide Web is quickly becoming the electronic marketplace of the decade.
In this chapter, you learn:
- Where the Web has been
- How Web usage is changing
- How you might do business on the Web
- Where the Web is going
The Scope of the World Wide Web
The Web is now accessible in over 200 countries on all seven continents, and its information and services range from the esoteric to the absurd. As of this writing, the AltaVista search engine reports that its robot has indexed 21 million Web pages, and the Netcraft Web Server Survey reports 135,000 different Web servers in its database. Web sites are maintained by universities, companies, public institutions, states, cities, and even high schools. Even McMurdo Station in Antarctica has a Web site. A number of powerful search engines (like AltaVista) and catalog sites (like Yahoo) allow rapid information location and retrieval, making the Web the ultimate tool for research, interactive entertainment, and even advertising. For more information, see http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/History.html, http://www.altavista.digital.com/, http://www.netcraft.co.uk/Survey/Reports, http://www.mcmurdo.gov/.One of several reasons why the World Wide Web rose to such prominence was because the underlying technology, HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the Hypertext Markup Language (htmL), were "free." (See http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Protocols/ and http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/.)Anyone could write an htmL viewer or HTTP application without having to pay anyone royalties or licensing fees. This also made it easy for the Web to be platform independent - a Microsoft Windows Web browser has no problem talking to a UNIX Web server, and a Windows Web browser can display the htmL pages exactly the same as a Macintosh Web browser or UNIX Web browser does.
Furthermore, because htmL describes documents at a structural level rather than a "pretty picture" level, htmL is extremely portable between platforms of different capabilities. In other words, it is possible to write a well-formed htmL page that looks equally attractive on a graphical Web browser like Mosaic as it does on a text-only browser like Lynx. In fact, some companies are building audio-only Web browsers for the visually impaired, and htmL's structural markup makes this not only possible, but quite elegant.
The Web is not free from forward compatibility problems - htmL has lacked a formal evolutionary strategy, and the one in HTTP (content negotiation) has not been widely implemented. Thus, many companies use new htmL tags, some of which cause older browsers to act inelegantly. This means you will often see sites that say "You must use Browser X to view these pages," which is more often a statement on the page author's capabilities than your browser's capabilities, since a site designed with care can be elegant for all browsers. Web standards coordination is the responsibility of the World Wide Web Consortium. See http://www.w3.org/.
There are many good sources for Internet usage statistics. One is located at Matrix Information and Directory Service (http://www.mids.org/). There are still statistics available at NSFNet (http://nis.nsf.net/nsfnet/statistics/), though the project was dismantled in April 1995.
The Web's Phenomenal Growth
In January 1993, there were only 50 known Web servers in existence. Today, the Web has become the largest source of traffic on the Internet. Table 1.1 and figure 1.1 show the growth of the Web relative to other Internet services on the Internet. You can find more details about the data shown in figure 1.1 at http://www.nielsenmedia.com/demo.htm. As was mentioned earlier, Web servers are in almost every developed country in the world.
If you're interested, a list of all registered servers is available from http://www.w3.org/hypertext/DataSources/WWW/Servers.html.
Fig. 1.1 - This data was taken by a Nielsen survey conducted on Web usage.
Service Name Port Rank % Pkts Rank % Bytes ftp-data 20 1 18.758 1 30.251 www 80 2 13.122 2 17.693 telnet 23 3 10.357 6 3.715
| Service Name | Port | Rank % | Pkts | Rank % | Bytes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| www | 80 | 1 | 21.443 | 1 | 26.250 |
| ftp-data | 20 | 2 | 14.023 | 2 | 21.535 |
| nntp | 119 | 3 | 8.119 | 3 | 8.657 |
As table 1.1 illustrates, the World Wide Web already comprises more traffic than any other Internet function. Despite the fact that the Web has been in operation for several years now, it is still able to grow at a rate of almost 20 percent a year.
The World Wide Web traffic in table 1.1 reflects only connections to World Wide Web servers. Web browsers can also connect to FTP (File Transfer Protocol), Gopher, and other types of servers.
But do we know anything else about who is actually on the Web? The Nielsen study mentioned in figure 1.1 tells us quite a bit about who is on the Net. Among the findings:
- 56 percent of WWW users were between 25-44 years old.
- 64.5 percent of users were male.
- 88 percent had at least some college education.
The Proliferation of Web Server Software
One of the barometers of the growth of the Web is the incredible number of different products out there, particularly in the Web server field. Two years ago, there were roughly half a dozen Web servers, all products of research groups or experimentation. Now there are dozens and dozens of different Web server products out there. Many are commercial, but the free Web servers (like Apache) continue to be developed, supported, and very widely used. The chart available from WebCompare shows over 45 actively supported Web servers. For more information, see http://www.webcompare.com/server-main.html.
Why You Want To Be on the WWW
There is little doubt that there are some huge benefits to being on the Web today. In business, numbers speak volumes. There is no doubt that the Web has them. Web users are generally educated, professional middle to upper-middle class people who want to use the Web for information, research, fun, and even for purchasing products.Like every new major medium that has come before, the Web has distinct, inherent, and unique advantages to other media. Instant access to information resources - also known as the "pull" model compared to television's "push" model - is one of the most significant advantages. Many commercial sites report thousands of visitors within the first days of operation. Electronic malls are appearing everywhere, and financial transactions are becoming safer all the time.
The best thing about the Web, of course, is that it isn't going to go away. It's only going to get bigger and bigger. Connections will get faster, computers will get better, programming will get slicker, and access will get better. Most importantly, more people will getting online.
So, you're convinced. The Web is the greatest thing since tail fins, right? Well, almost. There are definitely a lot of advantages to doing business on the Net (as well as some pitfalls), and it will definitely be helpful to know about some of them. Who's out there? What are they like? Are they ready to buy your product? Who's doing business on the Web?
Some of those questions are easy to answer. We know that there are a lot of educated professionals on the Internet. We also know that many of them are involved in education, research, and industry. It's time to dig a little deeper and find out a little bit about how the Web can serve businesses and consumers of all kinds.
More Than a High-Tech Billboard: Your Name on the Web
The Web has proven that people will come - in droves - to the Internet if it's easy to use and accessible. For those in business for profit, being on the Web, referred to as "having a presence on the Web," usually serves two main purposes.One reason many business get on the Web is to sell their product. Many companies, such as CD-Now, are focused on marketing a specific product or class of products (see fig. 1.2). They are not as concerned about establishing a brand identity or giving information away. They offer a product, and hope people will buy it. For more information about CD-Now, see http://www.cdnow.com/.
Fig. 1.2 - CD-Now is a Web-based company that sells music on the Internet.
Another big motivation for businesses to get on the Net is for advertising purposes. These companies want to further the equity they have established with their name brand, whether it be local, statewide, or national (see figures 1.3 and 1.4).
Fig. 1.3 - GISD is a Michigan company that provides Internet training and other services.
Fig. 1.4 - Even Coca-Cola, known the world around, advertises on the Web.
Companies who use the Web for this purpose are often service-based businesses, such as Global Information Services & Design in Michigan. Still others offer products that are just very difficult to sell over the Web and for whom product familiarity is of utmost importance. Again, these types of companies are generally national in nature or are service providers of some sort.
Table 1.2 shows what businesses reported when asked what they used the Web for. As you can see, many of the functions already being employed through other media are being utilized on the Web even today.
Percent of WWW Business Users Who Have Used It to...Collaborate with others 54% Publish information 33% Gather information 77% Research competitors 46% Sell products or services 13% Purchase products or services 23% Provide customer service and support 38% Communicate internally 44% Provide vendor support and communications 50%
Web Demographics: Who Is Your Audience?
It's time to talk about a few specifics about who exactly is on the Internet, and whether they actually buy what a business has to sell. We're going to return to the Nielsen survey mentioned in figure 1.1 for some more statistics that were gathered from 280,000 telephone interview nationwide.If you're interested in getting a copy of the full report, The Final Report is available for purchase from CommerceNet (phone: 415-617-8790; e-mail: survey@commerce.net) and Nielsen Media Research (phone: 813-738-3125; e-mail: interactive@nielsenmedia.com). You can also find summary information on the Web at http://www.nielsenmedia.com/demo.htm.
So what did the Nielsen survey find? Well, over 2.5 million Americans have purchased products and services over the WWW. Again, as with all other numbers, these too will continue to grow. Earlier in the chapter, you were given a glimpse of some general demographics of users. The survey showed specific results important for businesses.
- 25 percent of WWW users had incomes over $80,000 a year.
- 55 percent of users have used the Web to research products or services and 14 percent have actually purchased them.
- There was a user base of 18 million Web users in the United States and Canada
- Total time spent on the Internet in the U.S. and Canada was actually equivalent to the total time spent watching rented video-tapes!
Cautionary Note
As rosy a picture as the Web paints, there are some downsides. The biggest is that any Internet survey or usage statistics fail to take into account the still large majority of people who do not access the Internet. Even with 18 million users using the Web on a regular basis according to the Nielsen report, that still leaves over 250 million people in the U.S. and Canada who still aren't on, not to mention the billions of people around the world who have yet to get online, where the rate of Internet penetration is even less. See http://www.census.gov/and http://www.statcan.ca/Documents/English/Faq/Pop/pop.htm.The Internet is not yet (nor will it likely ever be) a panacea for everyone's advertising and marketing woes. It's another tool that can, and should, be utilized along with other more traditional media.
What Will the Web Be Like Tomorrow? Next Week?
Now that you have a better idea of where the Web has been and where it is, wouldn't you like to know where it's going? Wouldn't we all? A popular TV commercial shows all sorts of fanciful futuristic gadgets as being "the future." The commercial ends with the conclusion that each possibility is likely and it's sheer guess-work as to what the future will actually hold. To an extent, that commercial is right, but we can make some educated guesses.We know that many advances are being made in technology that are now used on the cutting edge. Although we can't know exactly what everything will be like later, we can attempt to point out some directions the Web appears to be moving in, and what in particular you should be thinking about.
Problems with Today's Web Technology
There's no doubt the Web's popularity has benefited in no small part from increased public awareness and the availability of dial-up Internet connections. But, let's face it, if any of you have tried to look at a complicated Web site using a 28.8 kbps modem, you know that we've still got a long way to go.Not only are there problems with access speed, but, as was mentioned in the last section, a large segment of the population remains untapped. The culture of the Internet is also changing - as more people get online, the demographics shift from those primarily in the computer and academic industry, to something that reflects more of the mainstream American and worldwide culture. This is on the whole a very good thing, but it can lead to some transitional problems, as we will later see.
Finally, a big roadblock to online commerce is the lack, or perceived lack, of security on the Internet. This problem is partially technological and partially psychological. There are protocols that can encrypt and validate transactions, such as Netscape's "Secure Sockets Layer" protocol or TERISA system's "SHTTP" protocol. (See http://home.netscape.com/newsref/std/SSL.html and http://www.terisa.com/shttp/intro.html.)But many users are concerned about giving, say, their credit card to an entity they only know about through the Internet. A few well-publicized Internet hacking incidents have also discouraged trust. This will be solved, but not by technology alone.
Breaking the Speed Limits
In the past, getting a full connection to the Internet required a high-speed leased telephone line and expensive networking hardware. As a result, only businesses and large institutions could afford Internet access. This limited the Internet's usefulness for commercial purposes. However, the introduction of high-speed modems and dial-up Internet Service Providers (ISPs) has made WWW access from home both possible and practical.The Serial Line Internet Protocol and Point-to-Point Protocol (SLIP and PPP) are two commonly used schemes for transferring Internet data to a home computer over the regular phone system. These protocols allow home users to obtain full Internet connections without having to purchase a leased line or expensive connecting hardware. This means that SLIP and PPP users can do everything that users with faster leased-line connections can do, albeit quite a bit slower.
"SL/IP" is equivalent to "SLIP." Both refer to Serial Line Internet Protocol; this book uses SLIP.
But as services get bigger and more complicated, even high-speed modems often don't do the job. The use of ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) lines has recently become more popular, but even this solution brings up the problem of needing specialized add-on cards and protocols. ISDN is also quite expensive and is not available in many areas. As an example, a typical ISDN line in North Carolina now costs over $200 for installation and will cost an additional $75 per month to maintain (for more on ISDN, go to http://alumni.caltech.edu/~dank/isdn/).
Two areas that seem to hold a lot of promise for solving the bandwidth problems are cable modem access and satellite delivery. Satellite delivery is probably farther away, but some cable companies in the United States are already offering Internet access through the same line through which you receive your TV stations. One example is TCI in East Lansing, who already offer 10Mbps/sec (Ethernet speed) Internet connections for under $50 a month. It's expected that these types of connections will only get cheaper and more widespread in the future.
As more and more schools, libraries, community colleges and other public institutions get connected, those who use these facilities will also become Internet users. In addition, ISP rates will continue to fall and, as Internet Service becomes available through more accessible and accepted means (such as cable modems), people's fear of technology will also continue to decrease.
One of the last factors involved in increased usage will stem from a not-so-obvious source. In the past, if you wanted Internet service, you had to contact the provider, install the software, make the connection, and basically go through a lot of trouble to get online. However, with the breakout of Windows 95, OS/2 Warp and other "Internet-Ready" operating systems, the Internet is now built-in (see fig. 1.5). When Internet access becomes as easy as buying your computer, plugging it in, and getting online, a large barrier to access will be removed.
Fig. 1.5 - Microsoft's Internet Explorer incorporates the same functionality as Netscape right out of the box.
New Technologies
Web site developers and Web content creators are now getting faced with a dizzying array of new technologies: Java, VRML, Shockwave, MPEG audio and video, and more. (See http://java.sun.com/, http://www.vrml.org/, http://www.macromedia.com/.)and The Web has always been multimedia, but until recently that has been limited to inlined gif and JPEG images, and externally-played sound and movie files. As the state of browser technology has advanced, so too have the types of media that can be supported. Newer browsers that support a plug-in architecture can now support an arbitrary number of new media types, so we can expect to see an explosion of new types as companies start building these plug-ins.Java and VRML are not covered in this book too deeply; they both are complex enough and powerful enough to merit their own books, and there are plenty of those out there. But well-prepared Webmasters should be aware of their existence, when they are appropriate, and how to integrate them into the server.
What Looks Good About the Web's Future
The future really is bright. We've already looked at many of the things that are available or soon will be that will make using the Web more efficient, profitable, and sensible. Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of all these changes is in the opportunity presented to small organizations without a lot of computer expertise or a lot of money to establish a presence on the Web.Running a Web server, as this book will hopefully prove, can be not only a pretty rewarding experience, but also a pretty inexpensive endeavor. The software provided with this book is free. The software and hardware for a UNIX operating system can be pretty cheap if you purchase a 486 or Pentium and install Linux on it, and bandwidth is getting less expensive all the time. One reason for the success of the Web has been that it has been very easy to set up and add content to a server, and thus there were no restrictions as to who could do it or what they could say. Even as "the big boys" come to play in this sandbox, that liberating capability is not likely to disappear.
As an example of this, the Windows 95 Web site (developed by a company other than Microsoft, by the way), at http://www.windows95.com/, runs BSDI on a Pentium with Apache (the same software provided with this book) and handles approximately 2 million hits on a busy weekday. The total hardware and software cost is somewhere around $5000, so don't let anyone fool you into thinking you need big expensive iron to put out a "real" Web site.
The Web has experienced terrific growth in the first several years of existence. Fueled by applications in business, government, education, and research, and turbo-charged by dramatic improvements in browser and server technology, the Web is poised to become the electronic marketplace and information source of the century.
