Web server suite featuring an HTML editor and other dev tools

While none of the components in Web Commander is stunning on its own, on the whole Luckman Web Commander offers an attractive suite of tools for designing and maintaining a small to medium-sized Web site. And for the price — under $200 for the Windows NT edition and under $100 for the Windows 95/98 edition — Luckman Web Commander is worth checking out.

Web Commander is positioned as an all-in-one package (similar to O’Reilly’s WebSite Professional in that regard) with a slew of specialized components, including the following:
And for the price — under $200 for the Windows NT edition and under $100 for the Windows 95/98 edition — Luckman Web Commander is worth checking out.

• WebMap, a tool for converting GIF graphics files into image maps
• WebEdit Pro, a very useful HTML editor
• Aimtech’s Jamba, a graphical tool for creating Java applications
• WebPage, a wizard for creating home pages
• WebTree, a graphical tool for viewing the layout of a server and its files
• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Excite for Web Server, an indexing tool that allows users to search through the contents of a Web server
• Domain Name Wizard, an automated tool for registering a domain name from InterNIC
• WebCharge, a tool for secure online credit-card transactions
• Perl 5.0, used to create CGI scripts
• WAIS Toolkit, used to create and search full-tech WAIS databases
• ODBC Connector, which manages connectivity to ODBC databases
• Java Developer’s Kit (JDK) for creating Java applets
• Support for CGI 1.1 and 1.2
• Support for ISAPI scripts

As you can see, none of these components will change the course of Web history, and in most cases they are not the most advanced tools of their kind (i.e. several of the apps are easily bested by standalone counterparts). Still, together they will give most entry-level users the tools they need to get a Web site up and running.

The Web server itself contains all the things that you’d expect from a workgroup server: real-time monitoring of activity, remote monitoring, cached threads of multiple simultaneous HTTP requests, multihomed Web servers (on NT), and directory aliasing. Again, there’s nothing flashy about the central Web server, but under most situations it will get the job done.

You could go out and obtain all the tools supplied as part of Web Commander on your own; none of them are especially exotic. But as a whole Web Commander is a convenient tool for creating and configuring a small to medium-sized Web site.

Pros: 7 Various development tools (Perl, Java, Jamba) that are useful for creating applications, 7 Wizards automate many routine functions, 7 WebEdit Pro is one of the better HTML editors on the market, 7 Support for ISAPI and online credit-card transactions

Cons: 7 Database connectivity limited to ODBC connections, 7 WAIS and Excite indexing and search tools are not the best available, 7 Web server on the basic side

New: 7 This is the initial release of Web Commander

Technical Support Information: Free telephone, fax, and e-mail support for registered users.

Operating Systems Supported: Windows 95/98. Windows NT