Apache for Dummies

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mindbend

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OK, I don't know anything about Apache or servers or how to set them up, so bear with me.

Currently I have a fulltime programmer who uses his PC laptop to develop and test our websites cuz he can set it up as a server for CGI processing. He is slowly enjoying and seeing the benefits of our Macs, but hasn't bothered to try and set up Apache on X (mostly waiting til GoLive 6 shows up as incentive). Since I know nothing about this, I can't do it on my own to kick start him.

So...my first question is about this built-in Web Sharing thing. Is this simply file sharing via HTTP or is it a full blown server where you can run CGI and stuff? Or are they two different things? See, I told you I don't know what I'm doing!

If it is more complicated to set up a full blown server, how do I do it? Is it simply turning on a "switch" of some sort or do I have mod some files and know all kinds of terminal commands and stuff?

Thanks for any help.
 
In Mac OS X, the built in web server is the de-facto web standard - Apache. This is a powerful web server, capable of running all of your CGIs as well PHP and other technologies.

To enable it, launch System Preferences -> Sharing and click the Start button under "Web Sharing On".

Now Apache is running!

Take a look at your site at http://localhost

To change the content of your site, put your documents into /Library/WebServer/Documents or if you wanna keep things in your user directory, /Users/username/Sites. If you put them in this second directory, you'd access them at http://localhost/~username

If you wanna run CGI scripts, they go in /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables We can help you with these too, once you reach that stage.
 
To enable it, launch System Preferences -> Sharing and click the Start button under "Web Sharing On".
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nice! thats so sweet! :D

ok, so now how does one set permissions and such on directories? I know it can be done thru the terminal, but are there any gui tools out there? i've looked around versiontracker and such, but to no avail...
 
Ctrl click on the directory, choose Show info.
Once that screen shows, select "Privileges" and play with the settings there until you get what you want.
 
"directory listing denied" would mean there are no HTML files that Apache recognizes as default in the folder you're trying to serve from. Stick an HTML file called "index.html" in the folder and try again.
 
yeah, thats true, but sometimes when you go to a directory with no index.html, you see whats called a "directory listing" - its a list of the files in that directory. ;)
I know it can be done thru the terminal, but are there any gui tools out there?
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All i'm looking for is info about setting web directory permissions in apache by using a GUI. I'm well aware that it can be done by editing /etc/httpd/httpd.conf in a text editor or in the terminal, but it would be nice to have an app that would let you do all that stuff without directly editing said file.
i've looked around versiontracker and such, but to no avail...
Click to expand...
As far as i can tell, no such beast exists...
 
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