Almost four million new websites go online in June

3.9 million new websites appeared on the world wide web last month, according to Netcraft's June 2008 Web Server Survey. The highlights: "The largest gain [is] at ThePlanet.com, where 632,000 new sites maintain its position as the 6th largest hosting company in the world. A large switch to the Bahamas was seen at Secure Hosting Limited, where 1.2 million sites were gained from Nameview Inc. The offshore hosting company offers web hosting and dedicated servers from its data centres located in the Bahamas and Jamaica, and even provides dual-homed hosting for a 100% uptime guarantee."

The number of distinct websites on the internet is approaching 200 million -- the 100 million mark was passed in October 2006. Half of the hosts are using the Apache open source HTTP server, with Microsoft's IIS coming second at 35% market share. A number of relatively less known open source and proprietary projects, such as lighthttd, share single digit percentages.