Installing Apache MSI: Step by step installation of Apache. Installing Apache on Windows (7)

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I draw your attention, dear reader, to the fact that in the PHP settings the symbol; is intended for commenting a line.

That's it for setting up your local development environment. Now, to create a new virtual host(For example noviysite.loc) you just need to take four simple steps:

1. In a folder C:\www\ create a new folder noviysite, inside which create a folder www And logs.

2. In the Apache virtual hosts configuration file C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf specify settings for the new virtual host noviysite.loc:

ServerName noviysite.loc DocumentRoot "C:/www/noviysite/www" ErrorLog "C:/www/noviysite/logs/error.log" CustomLog "C:/www/noviysite/logs/access.log" common

3. On file C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts specify redirection for the new virtual host to the local server: 127.0.0.1 noviysite.loc

4. Restart Apache by left-clicking on the icon next to the clock and selecting Restart.

P.S.: Naturally in a folder C:\www\noviysite\www there should be site files that will be displayed in the browser when you enter the URL noviysite.loc/....

If only the domain name is entered noviysite.loc from folder C:\www\noviysite\www the file will be downloaded index.html(Apache is configured this way by default and it is this file that is automatically launched when you enter only the domain name).

Since dynamic sites written in PHP have recently become widespread, the start file will not be named index.html, A index.php. In order to, along with index.html when you entered only the domain name, it also automatically launched index.php need to make some minor changes to the file C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\httpd.conf:

Finding a block of directives DirectoryIndex index.html. After the directive DirectoryIndex index.html you need to add a space index.php so that it turns out like this: DirectoryIndex index.html index.php.

I would like to note that in this case Apache will first look for the file index.html and try to launch it, and then index.php.

If the site folder does not contain a file index.html or index.php(and it contains a file called kakoeto_imya.html), then set the URL noviysite.loc it won't end well in the browser (Apache won't find the files it wants to run by default). To run a file from a site folder named kakoeto_imya.html you need to type URL noviysite.loc/kakoeto_imya.html.

A legitimate question arises: How to administer MySQL databases if there is no phpMyAdmin?
The answer to this question is the HeidiSQL program and .

For dessert

After reading this article, I hope you have clarity on the question of “how a website works from a hosting provider’s server,” as well as “how to install and configure Apache, PHP and MySQL yourself.” Now it’s not a sin to drink a cup of coffee and watch a funny video.

I express my gratitude to the excellent programmer Pavel Krasko

for assistance in writing this article.

I devoted myself to the problem of installing a local development environment on a computer running Windows. If, after reading the article, you were unable to start the local environment, I highly recommend watching the video tutorial.

Apache is the most popular free web server. As of 2016, it is used on 33% of all Internet sites, which is approximately 304 billion sites. This web server was developed back in 1995 as a replacement for the popular NCSA that server and fixed many of its problems. Rumor has it that his name comes from a patchy, as he was fixing NCSA errors. Now, it is a cross-platform program that supports Windows, Linux and MacOS and provides sufficient flexibility, customization and functionality. The program has a modular structure, which allows you to expand its functionality almost indefinitely using modules.

You can install Apache on Linux using a few commands, but the program provides a very large number of settings that can be changed, as well as modules that, when enabled, will work better. This article will cover installing and configuring Apache, we will use Ubuntu as the main system, but you can repeat these steps in any other distribution. We will look at not only installing the program itself, but also how to configure it, setting up apache virtual hosts, as well as the most useful modules.

At the moment, the newest version of the program is 2.4, so setting up apache 2.4 will be considered. As I already said, on Linux the program is installed in literally a couple of commands. To install on Ubuntu, first update the system to the latest version:

sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade

Then install apache2:

sudo apt install apache2

In other distributions, the program package is called either this or httpd and installing it will not cause you any difficulties.

After installation is complete, you need to add the web server to startup so as not to start it manually after turning on the computer:

sudo systemctl enable apache2

Apache setup

Gone are the days when Apache configuration was stored in a single file. But it’s correct: when everything is distributed in its own directories, it’s easier to navigate the configuration files.

All settings are contained in the /etc/apache/ folder:

• File /etc/apache2/apache2.conf responsible for basic settings
• /etc/apache2/conf-available/*- additional web server settings
• /etc/apache2/mods-available/*- module settings
• /etc/apache2/sites-available/*- virtual host settings
• /etc/apache2/ports.conf- ports on which apache runs
• /etc/apache2/envvars

As you noticed, there are two folders for conf, mods and site. These are available and enabled. When you enable a module or host, a symbolic link is created from the available folder to the enable folder. Therefore, it is better to perform settings in the available folders. Generally speaking, you could do without these folders, take everything and dump everything into one file the old fashioned way, and everything would work, but no one does that now.

First let's look at the main configuration file:

vi /eta/apache2/apache2.conf

Timeout- indicates how long the server will try to continue the interrupted transmission or reception of data. 160 seconds will be enough.

Keep Alive On- a very useful parameter, it allows you to transfer several files in one connection, for example, not only the html page itself, but also images and css files.

MaxKeepAliveRequests 100- maximum number of requests per connection, the more, the better.

KeepAliveTimeout 5- connection timeout, usually 5-10 seconds are enough to load a page, so you don’t need to set any more, but you also don’t need to break the connection before all the data has loaded.

User, Group- user and group on behalf of which the program will run.

HostnameLookups- record domain names in logs instead of IP addresses, it is better to disable it to speed up work.

LogLevel- level of error logging. By default, warn is used, but to make the logs fill out more slowly, just enable error

Include- all include directives are responsible for connecting the configuration files discussed above.

Directory directives are responsible for setting access rights to a particular directory in the file system. The syntax here is:

Parameter value

The following basic options are available here:

AllowOverride- indicates whether .htaccess files should be read from this directory; these are the same settings files and have the same syntax. All - allow everything, None - do not read these files.

DocumentRoot- sets from which folder documents should be taken to be displayed to the user

Options- indicates which web server features should be allowed in this folder. For example, All - allow everything, FollowSymLinks - follow symbolic links, Indexes - display the contents of the directory if there is no index file.

Require- sets which users have access to this directory. Require all denied - deny everyone, Require all granted - allow everyone. You can use the user or group directive instead of all to explicitly specify the user.

Order- allows you to control access to the directory. Accepts two values: Allow,Deny - allow for everyone except those specified or Deny,Allow - deny for everyone except those specified..ru.

All these directives are not used here, since we are happy with the default values, but in .htaccess files they can be very useful.

We are left with the /etc/apache2/ports.conf file:

It contains only one directive, Listen, which tells the program which port it should work on.

The last file is /etc/apache2/envvars, you are unlikely to use it, it contains variables that can be used in other configuration files.

Setting up an Apache server via htaccess

.htaccess files allow you to configure your Ubuntu web server to behave in a specific directory. All instructions specified in this file are executed as if they were wrapped in a tag if they were in the main file.

It is important to note that in order for the server to read instructions from .htaccess, the settings for this folder in the main or virtual host file must not contain AllowOverride None for all settings to work you need AllowOverride All.

Otherwise, any configuration of the Apache server can be done here, from enabling modules to simply changing folder access. Since we have already considered all the parameters, let’s just give a couple of examples:

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all

Denies everyone access to this folder, important to apply for configuration folders. Most often, .htaccess is used to work with the mod_rewrite module, which allows you to change requests on the fly:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^product/([^/\.]+)/?$ product.php?id=$1 [L]

But this is a very broad topic and is beyond the scope of this article.

Configuring Apache Modules

As I already said, Apache is a modular program, its functionality can be extended using modules. All available loader modules and module configuration files are located in the /etc/apache/mods-available folder. And activated in /etc/apache/mods-enable.

But you don't have to analyze the contents of these folders. Configuring Apache 2.4 by adding modules is done using special commands. You can view all running modules with the command:

You can enable the module with the command:

sudo a2enmod module_name

And disable:

sudo a2dismod module_name

After enabling or disabling modules, you need to restart apache:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

When one of these commands is executed, a symbolic link to a module file with the extension load is created or deleted in the mods-available directory. You can look at the contents of this file, there is only one line. For example:

vi /etc/apache2/mods-available/deflate.load

This means that the module could be activated simply by adding this line to the apache2.conf file. But it is customary to do just that to avoid confusion.

The module settings are located in the same folder, only in a file with the .conf extension instead of load. For example, let's look at the settings of the same module for deflate compression:

vi /etc/apache2/mods-available/deflate.conf

The files in the conf-available folder are the same modules, only they are installed separately from apache, these can be configuration files to enable the php module or any other programming language. Everything works exactly the same here, only the commands for enabling and disabling these modules are slightly different:

a2enconf module_name

a2disconf module name

As you have seen, enabling modules is very simple. Let's enable a few necessary but not enabled by default modules:

sudo a2enmod expires
$ sudo a2enmod headers
$ sudo a2enmod rewrite
$ sudo a2enmod ssl

The expires and headers modules reduce the load on the server. They return a Not Modified header if the document has not changed since the last request. The expiries module allows you to set the time for which the browser should cache the received document. Rewrite allows you to change requested addresses on the fly, very useful when creating CNC links, etc. And the last one to enable support for SSL encryption. Don't forget to restart apache2 after completing the settings.

Configuring Apache Virtual Hosts

It would not be entirely convenient if only one website could be hosted on one physical machine. Apache can support hundreds of sites on a single computer and serve the correct content for each one. Virtual hosts are used for this. The server determines which domain the request is coming to and serves the required content from the folder of this domain.

Apache hosts settings are located in the /etc/apache2/hosts-available/ folder. To create a new host, just create a file with any name (it’s better to end with the host name) and fill it with the necessary data. You need to wrap all these parameters in a directive VirtualHost. In addition to the parameters discussed here, the following will be used:

• ServerName- primary domain name
• ServerAlias- additional name by which the site will be accessible
• ServerAdmin- administrator email
• DocumentRoot- folder with documents for this domain

For example:

vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/test.site.conf

Below I have written instructions on how to set up an Apache server on a local computer with Windows 7 and install PHP, MySql and phpMyAdmin on it.

Installing Apache

Download the distribution kit with the Apache server from the site http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi. Select version 2.2.22 and download the installer for windows. On your home computer you are unlikely to need SSL, select “ Win32 Binary without crypto (no mod_ssl) (MSI Installer)«.

Before installation, turn off Skype, or disable the use of port 80 in the Skype settings, as this will interfere with the installation.

Install Apache by running the installation file. All installation steps are standard.

Click Next.

We agree with the license.

Enter data into all three text fields. You can enter a non-existent domain like test.test or example.com. This data is needed to create a basic configuration file. Under the text fields, one of the most important settings is to install Apache as a service or as a regular program. Select “for All Users, on port 80, as a Service - Recommended” - install as a service.

Select Custom (custom installation).

Selecting components and installation location. You can leave all the default values.

Click Install.

We complete the installation.

Installation completed. An Apache icon will appear in the tray, with which you can quickly stop/start.

We check the functionality. Go to your browser at http://localhost/ If everything is done correctly, you will see the inscription “It Works!” Congratulations, the first step has been completed successfully.

Note.

I recommend immediately enabling support for CNC links; to do this, uncomment the line LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so in file httpd.conf. It is in the folder conf in the place where you installed Apache.

It was like this:
(codecitation)#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so(/codecitation)

It should look like this:
(codecitation)LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so(/codecitation)

Here and henceforth, uncommenting means removing the comment sign - #, which is located at the beginning of the line.

To be continued.

Last update: 10/20/2017

Let's download the Apache web server package from http://www.apachelounge.com/. Let's select the latest version of the server. On the downloads page we can find two versions of the Apache package - for 64-bit systems and for 32-bit.

Before installing Apache, it should be noted that if our OS is Windows, then the package for C++ must be installed on the system, which can be found at the address for 64-bit and 32-bit.

After downloading the package from Apache, unpack the downloaded archive. In it we will find the folder directly with the web server files - the Apache24 directory. Let's move this directory to drive C so that the full path to the directory is C:/Apache24.

Now we need to install Apache as a Windows service. To do this, launch the Windows command line as an administrator and go to the web server directory using the command

httpd.exe -k install

If the installation is successful, the command line will display the message "The Apache2.4 service is successfully installed". The server will also be tested:

In my case, as shown in the picture above, Apache was unable to connect to port 80, which is the default in the configuration, since I have port 80 listening on another web server - IIS. This is one of the common problems when running Apache. To solve this, we need to either disable the IIS service or specify a new port for Apache. I will choose the second path.

After installation, we will configure the server to connect it with the previously installed PHP interpreter. To do this in the folder C:\Apache24\conf Let's find the httpd.conf file and open it in a text editor.

The httpd.conf file configures the behavior of the web server. We will not touch upon its descriptions, but will only make small changes that we will need to work with PHP.

First, let's find the line

Listen 80

This line indicates the listening port. The default is port 80. If there are no conflicts with ports, you can leave it as it is. I'll change the port to 8080.

#ServerName www.example.com:80

and change to

ServerName localhost:8080

Now let's connect PHP. To do this, find the end of the module loading block in the httpd.conf file LoadModule

And at the end of this block we will add the lines

LoadModule php7_module "C:/php/php7apache2_4.dll" PHPIniDir "C:/php"

DocumentRoot "c:/Apache24/htdocs"

By default, the directory "c:/Apache24/htdocs" is used as the document storage. Let's replace this line with the following:

DocumentRoot "c:/localhost"

Let's change the paths of the files in which information about errors or site visits will be recorded. To do this, find the line

ErrorLog "logs/error.log"

And let's replace it with

ErrorLog "c:/localhost/error.log"

CustomLog "logs/access.log" common

And let's replace it with

CustomLog "c:/localhost/access.log" common

And we will also find the block and add two lines to it:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

And at the end we will find the block :

DirectoryIndex index.html

And replace it with the following:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.shtml index.php

This is the minimum required configuration needed to work with PHP. To manage the server (start, stop, restart), we can use the utility that comes with the kit - . This utility can be found in the directory C:\Apache24\bin

Let's launch the utility. The ApacheMonitor icon will appear in the tray. Click on it and select Start in the context menu that appears.

If everything is configured correctly, the web server should start.

Now our task is to make sure that php is connected and working correctly. To do this, let's go to the c:/localhost folder, which we created to store documents, and add a regular text file to it. Let's rename it index.php and add the following content to it:

IN in this case we created simple script which outputs general information about PHP. Now let's access this script by typing the address in the browser bar http://localhost:8080/index.php

What happened here? When accessing the site on local machine the address is http://localhost. Since we specified 8080 as the port, the port is also indicated in the address via a colon. If we used port 80, which is the default, then it would not need to be specified.

Then the name of the resource being accessed is indicated. In this case, the file index.php is used as a resource. And since the httpd.conf file specifies the directory as the web server document storage C:\localhost, then it is in this directory that the web server will search for the necessary files.

And since we indicated above during configuration that as home page file can be used index.php, then we can also access this resource simply http://localhost:8080/

This completes the installation and configuration of the Apache web server, and we can create our websites.