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Web Site Construction Kit for Windows NT by Brown & Zimmerman

ISBN: 1 575 21047 9       Publisher: Sams       Pages: 400pp+CD       Price: £46-95

Categories:   internet

Reviewed by Ian Cargill in C Vu 9-2 (Jan 1997)

The initial chapters explain a number of the basic concepts involved, though I suspect if you have to be told what FTP is, you aren't ready for this book yet! The explanations of things such as PPP, SLIP, ISDN, etc. are fairly basic, though there is a useful comparison between the different connection technologies (modem, ISDN, T1, T3, ATM, etc.). There are also some quite reasonable recommendations on what you will need for hardware to run it all on.

This book includes a CD which contains all the software you will need to get a basic Web site (and more) up and running. The software is a mixture of Shareware and Freeware, so you will have to pay some (mostly modest) registration fees if you use it. Programs are included for Web and telnet services, CGI tools, email support, Dial-up connection manager, Web Editing, Perl and Imagemap editing. The authors use the FTP server supplied with NT.

Much of the book is devoted to describing all of these utilities and explaining how to install and configure them. The couple that I have played with so far went quite smoothly. There are some very good tips in the book, including tips on general site administration tasks. There is also some good, basic material on Internet Robots (and how to handle them) and Security. It won't make you a security expert, but it does show you what to worry about and how you might go about tackling security problems.

There is a fairly basic tutorial on HTML; mostly at the HTML 2 level. It will get you started, but you will need something else to make you really proficient. The section on CGI programming is better, but you would still want to get a specialist book on the subject.

There is a short chapter on ways to integrate Database systems on your web site. It shows how to install and use the WAIS Database Toolkit and the Demon version of Cold Fusion from the CD.

Of the eight appendices, the most useful are probably a discussion of alternative NT Web Servers and a list of resources on the Internet of interest to Webmasters. The HTML reference is a bit out of date and the others fall into the merely interesting category.

Overall, I this is quite a reasonable book. If you want to have a go at setting up a Web site without a big investment, then I think this could be a good way to start. A reasonably well written book with all the software you are likely to need to start with.