Posted by arlene

The aim of this post is to describe an example Web server. The one which I shall describe is Apache. This is certainly the most popular Web server being used on the Internet at the time of writing.

There are a number of reasons why Apache is popular. The main one is that it is free. It is the product of an open source project that distributes a number of Internet related products to anyone that has the facility to download them.

The Apache project

It is a commonly held belief that the Apache project just deals with the Apache Web server. While this is its main product there are a host of software products which can be downloaded from the Apache Web site. These include Xerces, a parser for the XML metalanguage; Tomcat, a server which processes Java servlets; Cocoon, a Web publishing system; PHP, a dynamic page technology; processors which enable the Apache server to integrate with programs written in the Perl programming language; processors for the XSLT transformation language, and Xang a rapid development environment for implementing dynamic pages in JavaScript.

Apache can be installed on UNIX, LINUX or Windows-based computers although the Apache Web site recommends UNIX or LINUX.

The installation of Apache is relatively easy. An installation script takes the user through the basic installation. After this has completed, the user can change a number of basic items of information that can be found in a configuration file. These include: the server name, for example www . open . ac uk; the IP address that the server is mounted at; the port or ports that the server listens to (usually 80); whether the

Server is to stand alone (the most common configuration) or whether other software should handle connections into the server; the e-mail address of the administrator who is associated with the server; where the essential files for Apache are to be stored; where server logs will be found; and finally the location of the pages that the server is to dispense.

Once the basic features of the server have been configured it can be started. This is straightforward; on Windows-based computers it involves double clicking an executable file; on a UNIX system all that is required is to enter the command line

$ /usr/ local/apache/bin/httpd

This will start the server and it can tested by placing a simple HTML file in the directory nominated as holding Web pages, starting a browser and selecting the address of the page.

Once a basic configuration has been set up there is a host of modifications that can be carried out; these include the following:

• Adding third party modules, for example adding modules which deal with new technologies such as SOAP.
• Configuring Apache so that it is capable of hosting a number of Web sites.
• Restricting access to the server so that certain HTTP commands are not allowed to access resources stored at the server.
• Restricting access from certain computers identified by their IP address.
• Setting up a file known as robots . txt which describes the wishes of the Web administrator concerning external indexing of the site. Web sites are continually visited by software agents known as robots which carry out indexing, usually for a search engine. The robots . txt file specifies what should be indexed; for example those documents which are in the course of construction can be specified as not being indexable.

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