Guide to Running Apache on Windows or Ubuntu

After using IIS for almost 4 years now, I have decided to give up on IIS for so many of its limitations.

Among one of those limitations was the inability to use “pretty permalink” or the mod-rewrite feature which comes built in with Apache. Although IIS 7 seems to have a plan to include similar sort of functionality but waiting for that to come and who knows how many more problems along with it, is just not worth waiting for. Its just more easier to get Apache running on your machine and get everything that IIS gives and much more.

You can either run Apache on Windows or in a Linux machine, for most people it will be easier to run it on windows.

To Run Apache on Windows:

1. Download latest Windows version of Apache from apache.org
2. And then there are some steps we will need to follow to configure the Apache2.2\conf\httpd.conf file located in your Apache installation directory (I will soon post the necessary modifications for the httpd.conf file).
3. After modifying the file you can easily restart the Apache server using the GUI that comes with Apache.
4. And your new Server is set to go.

And the second best option is to totally get rid of windows and start with a brand new Debian distribution Ubuntu and follow the following steps after you get Ubuntu running.

To Run Apache on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)/Linux with PHP, MySQL support:

1. Optionally, install SSH Client and Server (for remote access to this server)
   sudo apt-get install ssh

2. Install Database Server
   sudo apt-get install mysql-server

3. Install Apache2 web server
   sudo apt-get install apache2

4. Install PHP5
   sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5

5. Install PHP5-MySQL support
   sudo apt-get install php5-mysql

6. Restart Apache
   sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

7. Optionally, install phpMyAdmin
   sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin
8. Restart the machine and you are set with your new LAMP server.

Note: If you are not very familier with Apache, it might help to start with a GUI control panel to manage all aspects of Apache. I found http://www.webmin.com/ to do a great job when it comes to managing Apache servers. It comes with tons of other goodies too.