Internet Services
Internet Services are the things that keep your customers signing on. From the web to name service and electronic mail, there's a lot to keep you amused.
Fortunately, most of the software you need is included in a Linux distribution, so you have much of what you need out of the box. Unfortunately, much of this stuff can be very confusing - but, after all, that's why we have FAQs.
World Wide Web Access
This is one of the easiest services to support. As long as your DNS is working (See Domain Name Service, below), it's pretty much automatic to get WWW access for your customers.
We'll cover your web server below.
Electronic Mail
Internet Electronic mail lets you send messages to anyone in the world, easily, reliably and inexpensively. As a result, it's one of the most popular services on the net.
There are a number of choices for electronic mail services on a Linux or other Unix machine.
Sendmail, the granddaddy of them all, has a fantastic book out, sendmail. This has excellent explanations of the whole thorny path of setting up a sendmail.cf file.
But perhaps you don't want to figure out an incredibly complex configuation file. Qmail might be for you - it's more secure, easier to understand, and works great. Unfortunately, there's no easy to digest manual like there is for sendmail, which might scare off a few folks. And you have to install it yourself - it doesn't come on any Linux distributions. But it's not hard, and - like sendmail - the program's free.
Domain Name Service
This is probably the most difficult service to set up in all net-dom, but don't worry too much - there are plenty of splendid resouces to help.
I strongly recommend that you pick up a copy of DNS and BIND - it tells you all you need to know about running a DNS server. Be warned that it's quite painful to set up DNS; simply leaving out a period in a configuration file can leave you scratching your head for hours. But this book, if carefully applied, will see you through.
Web Servers
A web server lets your users create their own web pages and post them to the Internet.
I've run both Netscape and Apache servers, and I can report that Apache is far superior - it's just as fast and much lighter on resource usage. And, thanks to the availability of source code, you can customize it for your own needs.
Apache is a complete, comprehensive description of the Apache server and its workings.
Database-Backed Web Servers
Many people will try and talk you into Microsoft Windows NT to do their database-backed web site. If you possibly can, don't listen to them; a Linux server running free software such as My SQL will do fine.
If they're doing the development and providing the server, or if you break down and accept NT, expect to spend a lot of time rebooting it.
Note that a compromise between the two camps might be to run Oracle on Linux. One advantage of this approach is that there is a wealth of books and information on Oracle available at your local bookstore or amazon.com
For an excellent reference on this subject - on the web, not yet published - visit Phillip Greenspun's Web Tools Review
USENET News
The confusion people feel about USENET starts with the name: It's not news at all, but rather an enormous grouping of discussions between people. Some are extremely helpful and well-mannered; others are flame-fests with more heat than light. And, of course, some are pornographic.
In the end, news is an indispensible resouce because there are so many people asking questions about so many things, and so many others answering them. Just go to DejaNews and ask a question; you're bound to get interesting answers.
Probably the best way to get news, until you get pretty big, is to use a commercial news service like Avi Freedman's Newsread.com. I use the service myself, and it's great, especially compared to the difficulty of setting up a news server.
Getting news to work is quite an undertaking. I've done it a few times, so I know what I'm saying. It takes more than an entire T1 to deliver a full set of news to your customers. But once you're big enough, or if you happen to want to get a selective newsfeed so you can archive groups that are useful to you, you'll want to check out Managing USENET from O'Reilly. This once archaic book has at long last been updated, and is drawing rave reviews once more.