PWS, an abbreviation for Personal Web Server, is Microsoft’s version of a Web server program for individual PC users who want to share Web pages and other files from their hard drive. PWS is a scaled-down version of Microsoft’s more robust Web server, Internet Information Server IIS. PWS can

be used with a full-time Internet connection to serve Web pages for a Web site with limited traffic. It can also be used for testing a Web site offline or from a “staging” site before putting it on a main Web site that is exposed to larger traffic.

PWS can be used together with Microsoft’s FrontPage, a Web site design product, to upload Web pages from a remote location or to the local hard drive; to check for dead links; to create directories; and to set permissions. PWS is frequently used as part of the trend toward peer-to-peer exchange and publishing.