Setup Apache Web Server and File Server on Windows

[Rudra.J]

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Here is another tutorial to Install and Setup Apache Web Server and File Server on Windows Operating System the most simplest way.
First you will need to download Apache from here. Now install Apache. Follow the Image Tutorial to Install Apache :





Enabling and Disabling the Apache Service

The Apache installer installs Apache to automatically start the Apache service when the installation finishes. If you wish to stop the Apache 2 service and only start it manually when you need it, You can disable it from : Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services > Apache2. Double click on it and you can stop and start the service and change the startup type to "Automatic" or "Manual" whenevr you want. If you make Apache2 service to be manual, apache service will terminate and start only when you run it manually. This could be useful if you're only using the apache server on your system to test your scripts and web pages and don't want the server running all the time.

Create a Web Server on Apache :
Go to C drive > Program Files > Apache Software Foundation > Apache2.2 > htdocs. Now here if you have created a website, copy the contents to this folder and your home page should be index.htm. If you which to change the default location of the web site you can do this to. Open this file : C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\httpd.conf. It will open in notepad. Now search for "DocumentRoot" and it will have this code :

DocumentRoot "C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs"

Chane this to any folder you like, but make sure its a folder and not a drive root else Apache Service will not run. Ok once you have made changes to this file, save it and restart apache. You can do this by accessing it from the system tray icon.
Note : Before making changes to the httpd.conf file, i would recommend you to take its backup, else in case you screw the system, it wont be recoverable. If you want to make this server private so that no one else can access this except the one you like to acces, you can change the default port number. Default port for web service is Port 80. In httpd.conf file search for :

ServerName localhost:80

Change this from localhost:80 to localhost:9201 or any other port you want. Save the conf file and restart Apache.

Create a File Server on Apache :

Search for "DocumentRoot" and there enter the path for the folder which you want to host on the file server. Now make sure there is no "index.html" file in that folder else it will take take the location you mentioned as a website instead of the file server. Now open httpd.conf file and search for :

<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
</Directory>

Now replace this with :

<Directory />
    Allow from all
</Directory>

This will let you access the directory based structure.
Thats it! Done...

[Rajesh4mLA]

The Apache web server comes standard with three aliases defined, which are also displayed for each virtual machine. In addition, it can mask a directory at the root of the document if it has the same name. You may would like to remark line 477-484 (Alias / icons / up to and including), Line 491 to 505 (AliasMatch ^ / manual ... up to and including), and the line from 515 to 526 ( ScriptAlias / cgi-bin / up to and including).