A server is defined (in the hyperDictionary) as “a computer that provides client stations with access to files and printers as shared resources to a computer network”.

The World Wide Web is made up of multi-thousands of servers hosting mega-thousands of websites. Those multi-thousands of servers run a surprisingly small number of different server software applications. And of those applications, Apache is by far the most widely used, despite direct heads-up competition from Microsoft, the 900 pound gorilla in the software world.

Apache – the word – is a tongue-in-cheek type reference to it’s origins as a much patched, updated form of the original web server written back in the dark ages of computing – a “patchy” server. Apache Server – the software – is now an open source (basically free, volunteer supported), widely used, modern server application – maintained, upgraded and supported by the Apache Software Foundation.

So, why would a person want his (or her) own personal server? Usually (and this is true for me) it’s to make creating web pages, and especially sites, easier. We, Linda & I, write web pages and develop web sites as a hobby: as a means of continuing our on-going education and keeping our brains active. Developing web pages on a server allows you to do some things you just can’t do in a folder on your computer. Things like using root-level indexing rather than relative indexing, which makes the code easier to write and simpler to troubleshoot when (not IF) something goes wrong. Also, using SSI (Server Side Includes), a normal part of almost all web hosts) allows you to drop in blocks of code that will be identical on all (or many) of your web pages – things like headers, or menus or footers, for instance – rather than having to copy those blocks onto each page individually. That reduces those identical blocks of code to just one place to update when the need arises, rather than on each individual page. That alone is worth the effort of setting up a personal server on your home computer.

Before starting this project I knew very little about networking in general and even less about servers, so this whole thing has been, and continues to be, a learning process for me. A real (and surprising to me) discovery is that setting up Apache Server on your personal computer is a piece of cake, so long as you do a little prep work before you start: see the set-up page.

This entire project was started in late July of 2007 – that was when I downloaded Apache Server, version 2.2.4, and started setting it up on my computer. My computer was an Intel Celeron running at 3.3GHz, 1Gb of RAM, a 200Gb harddrive and is running Windows XP Pro, SP2. I’ve since upgraded my computer, so I’ve also set it up (twice, thanks to losing a harddrive!) on a Windows 7 machine. Plus I set it up on my wife’s machine (same as mine) early this year (2013). I’d say the process is pretty much the same for any Windows machine since at least Win 98 SE.

I should probably insert a warning here: Apache Server is like a gateway drug to… more. More technical software you’ll probably want to install. More learning you’ll probably want to dig into. Things like programming languages like PHP or Perl that will help you to use things like MySQL… which you’ll need if you decide to tinker with WordPress. None of this is particularly difficult but it probably will be new and challenging.

Also I should tell you that there is an alternative to the manual installation of Apache Server and the other tools.  Do a Google search for WAMP and read about another way of doing the same thing. . . sorta.

My final thought on this intro is a caveat: take everything I say here with a grain of salt. It worked for me, with the setup(s) I had, and I’ve been as honest as I know how to be… BUT, I ran into to some real problems that took me several days to solve. Mostly because I just didn’t know enough and, as a consequence, I either misunderstood or just flat missed the information needed to solve the problem(s). Some of the the tutorials I read were based on earlier versions of Apache, so some of the default set-ups were a bit different, and of course I didn’t know enough to ask intelligent questions. What saves everything is the awesome power of the Internet – if you know the right questions to ask (via Google), you can almost always find the answers… eventually.