LiteSpeed Web Server Editor's Review

LiteSpeed Web Server is a high performance HTTP server that features a lot of functionality.

The server comes as a Standard version, which is free and it has several limitations, and it comes as an Enterprise version which is more optimized, and it doesn't have limitations. The Standard version is recommended for small projects or for Web development, since the number of maximum concurrent connections is limited to 150.

The installation of the Web server requires the shell, but the whole operation isn't difficult. You need to read carefully the guidelines provided by each step of the installation process. At the end of the setup you can start the server, and place it into the startup items.

LiteSpeed, besides its high performance and small memory footprint, also provides you features like HTTP 1.1 compliancy, IPv6 support, API connectivity like CGI 1.1, FastCGI, the own API, LSAPI (LiteSpeed API), or AJP. It also provides you support for dynamic languages such as: PHP, JSP/AJP, Ruby/Ruby on Rails, Python, C/C++. The PHP support comes with the distribution package. The standard version comes with PHP 4.4.7.

Other useful features for LiteSpeed: .htaccess support, Microsoft Frontpage server extension, Virtual Hosts, it can import an existing Apache configuration. It also features a strong built in security. The support for SSL and TLS is also implemented.

Unlike other HTTP servers, LiteSpeed provides a Web configuration interface. This interface provides you a lot of flexibility in configuration and it is also very usable for remote editing of the server settings.

Pluses: it has a lot of features, it integrates with various dynamic server side programming languages, it's less vulnerable because it has built in a strong security, it has a Web administration interface, it comes with PHP extensions.

Drawbacks / flaws: the Standard version has a 150 concurrent connections limit.

In conclusion: this product can be used either as a Web hosting solution, or it can be used for development. In either of the cases, you can take advantage of the high performance of this solution.

version reviewed: 3.1.1