At last, Chrome Server is live. We're in a Beta mode for the foreseeable future, but we're open to the public. Please create an account, login, and start creating cool stuff. Oh, you want to know what it is first? Luddite!

Lots of hassle

Developing simple web applications is ridiculously difficult. You have to configure application servers, databases, and scripting modules. You need to know server-side scripting languages and database query languages. You need to set up file shares for the codebase and you need various code editors installed on your developers' machines.

There are economies of scale, of course. If you're a big developer shop you have an arsenal of specialists to manage most of these tasks. Chrome Server is not for the big developers. Chrome Server is for the occasional developer who sometimes thinks: "wouldn't it be neat to have a little website that...?" Or the part-time game author who wants to put their work up on the web but doesn't fancy spending a couple of hours tweaking the Apache configuration files. Or for anyone who wants to prototype something before they invest any of that effort later on.

Interested?

Hassle limited

For a one man show, putting a web application that runs a bit of server side logic generally requires you to know operating system basics, web server configuration basics, a scripting language (say PHP), a database language (usually SQL), HTML for the page layout, CSS for the styling, and Javascript for any dynamic stuff on the page (ActionScript used by Flash is basically another Javascript dialect).

To program Chrome Server you need to know HTML for the page layout (but we supply a basic template you can start with), CSS for the styling (but you can use our style sheets if you like), and Javascript for any dynamic stuff on the page or for any server side or database code. That's a bit simpler isn't it?

Oh and you don't need an editor. Just a web browser. The code for a Chrome Server site can all be edited through the browser.

So for a typical tool comparison:

Normal:

• Browser
• Eclipse
• PHP
• SQL
• MySQL
• Apache
• Linux
• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript

Chrome Server:

• Browser
• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript

Personally I think that's quite the improvement

Learn more

If you want to learn more about Chrome Server then I recommend watching the ten minute walk through of creating an online todo list first, then have a browse through the API documentation, and then create an account and start playing.

Have fun! Drop me a line if you have any ideas for missing features.