April 21 2009 
What can you do with Rev hosting?
Get your own email address, start a blog, or start a business, it's all in your hands now with On-Rev's friendly, easy-to-use service!
A recent survey by RunRev revealed that most Revolution users already had a hosting provider -- and that the large majority of those were looking for someone better! Many of those people recognized a great deal when they saw it, and jumped on the On-Rev Founders special already.
But what if you're in the camp of those who don't know what all the excitement is about? Why would you need hosting? What can you do with server scripting?
Hosting, Briefly
At the basic level, hosting is for anyone who wants to have their own space on the Web. Many people online make do with a Hotmail or gMail email address, and perhaps have set up a Facebook page or MySpace profile. But if you have a business, or have something you want to tell the world, you'll need something more. Buying a domain name reserves an address for you on the Web. Hosting is the destination for that address, it's where all the mail goes and where the Web pages live.
So, a lot of companies offer Web hosting. What about the scripting side of the equation? Why do I need to script a web server?
The Value of Server Scripting
In a nutshell, web pages written in pure HTML are static. Whenever you see a page that does something dynamic -- data that changes depending on user input, interaction with a database, dynamic content of any type -- those actions must be programmed into the page using a second, scripted language like PHP.
The scripted language is integrated into the same page as the HTML code and the server interprets the scripts and shows you dynamic content. Almost every major site on the web uses scripts on their pages in one way or another.
Up until now, anyone who wanted dynamic content on a web page had to learn one of those other languages. What has just happened is that Runtime has figured out a way to allow a web server to work with our familiar Revolution scripting, and allow that to be embedded into a web page instead of one of the other languages.
No Hassle Server Scripting
This is big stuff. The server needs to be set up in a particular way to allow this, and as of now, only RunRev has that setup in place. Yes, there is an older Revolution server scripting engine, but it had some limitations (you could not embed code into HTML), no debugger, no variable watcher, and scripts had to be uploaded manually. The biggest problem was that the old server engine, while freely distributable, was not supported by all hosting providers and could be difficult to even get started with.
The On-Rev service, on the other hand, is using brand-new technology, a new server scripting engine and a client that handles the uploading/downloading/editing/debugging of scripts for you. There are also some great new features like a streamlined Internet library for working with data on remote servers. All this is pre-configured and ready to go, so you can focus on your script, not the setup.
RunRev has made this technology available at an early but very usable stage so that we can take advantage of Revolution's greatest strengths, accomplishing things that could not (or would not) be done because we don't want to learn a second, more complex programming language. We can improve our existing web pages in a fraction of the time that those other scripting languages can allow.
Excellent Value
The On-Rev setup pretty much matches industry standards in terms of features and capability -- except for this remarkable scripting feature which no one else has. There is nothing to lose by changing to Runtime's web hosting service, and everything to gain if you want to write web pages using the language we know and love.
There is another element not related to the technology that can't be ignored, and that is the Founders offer, which gets you lifetime hosting. So you make a payment that is comparable to what you pay other hosting providers (they all require you to buy a year or two or three at a time to get their best rates) and you never have to worry about it again.
Then and Now
The Revolution engine has always had the capability to work with a server as long as it was set up as a CGI service. This is a complicated and tedious task in general, but once set up it works well. (This method isn't going away, by the way. It will still be functional for those who want it.)
However, with the new HTML-integrated capabilities, CGIs are no longer needed. You can write HTML and Rev script in the same web page and your users will see content based on whatever your scripts do.
You don't have to worry about any of the complexities of CGIs because none of that matters any more (permissions, engines, Apache installation, missing libraries, line endings, etc. All moot now.)
Anyone who's had to work with the old-style CGIs -- or tried them and gave up -- will find the new method liberating. One of the hardest things to do is debug a CGI. When they go wrong, you usually get a "500-Internal Server Error" and not much more to go on. It reminds me of working with HyperCard version 1.0, where the only way to know what a variable contained was to put its contents into the message box. When you get a CGI script error, it's up to you to figure out the problem, because the clues are sparse if they exist at all.
New Scripting a Joy to Use
That's all over with now. The On-Rev service provides a live debugger that lets you step through the scripts on a web page, just as though you were working in a stack. That alone is worth the price of admission for web page authors. For me, I haven't seen such a cool thing since I was gob smacked by the ability to run a stack from a remote server in one line of script!
The most exciting thing about the new On-Rev service, though, is that I think it will inspire many people to make their own server scripts, and even create exciting new products, much the way HyperCard did. It's really hosting, and server scripting, for "the rest of us!"
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