Webupon

Although not a simple project for the less than computer savvy users, this guide is designed for beginners. My aim is to make an easy Do-It-Yourself guide for people who have very little knowledge of how a web server works.

This guide will include the steps needed in order to get your own web server running, however this does not include adding server side scripting, setting up a domain name for your server, or for that matter connecting your server to the Internet. The reason for not including the previous is because I plan on using those for other topics.

Necessary Requirements

First of all you will need a computer running Windows XP, any flavor of the XP family will work. You will also need an Internet connection in order to download necessary files.

Getting Started

To get things going you will need to download the Apache web server software from the
Apache website.

For this guide suggest using the most recent version Apache HTTP Server 2.2.4. Unless you are experienced and comfortable with compiling software, I also recommend when downloading the Apache web server software choose the “Win32 Binary (MSI Installer)” download. A note on security after the file is downloaded check its MD5 Checksum with the one provided on the Apache website, If unsure about how to do this try Google. After searching for “MD5 Checksum” the first link was to Wikipedia explaining what it is, and the second link was for a Windows program to check the MD5 Checksum of a file.

Now that the installer file is downloaded rest of the processes is merely executing the program and following the steps. The first part of information this installer requires is the Server Information, this includes Network Name, Server Name, and Administrator’s Email Address. The Network Name and Server Name are mainly for DNS purposes, the Administrator’s Email Address part is used on error pages and other various programs that display the Admin’s Email.

If you plan on eventually having a domain name then use that information for this step. Otherwise use something simple like example.com for the Network Name, www.example.com for the Server Name, and Admin@example.com for the email. The next step is choosing “Typical” or “Custom” install, just choose typical and then resume the rest of the install. If all goes well you will eventually get a message saying “The Installation Wizard has successfully installed Apache HTTP Server…”

Testing Everything

To test your installation of Apache HTTP Server open your favorite web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) and go to your computer’s loopback address, “http://127.0.0.1”, this is an internal address in the computer reservered for itself and only itself. If your browser displays a page that says, “It works!” then your installation was successful.

Adding a Website to Your Web Server

To add your own HTML files to the server you must place the files within the DocumentRoot directory. The DocumentRoot is basically the directory from which your server will serve content from. In this version of Apache this directory is located at “C:Program FilesApache Software FoundationApache2.2htdocs” where “C:” is the drive that you installed Apache on. After adding your HTML files you can test it out by going to your loopback address in your browser again.