Apache Web Server 

Apache, more precisely the Apache HTTP Server, is an open-source web server developed for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows.

It has played a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. Since April 1996 Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the web. It has lost its position mainly to the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) since March 2006 and to the .NET platform used by some large blog providers, but it still serves roughly around 50% servers worldwide.

Released under the Apache License, Apache is characterized as free software and open source software.

Apache features and functions

Features can range from server-side programming language support to authentication schemes. Some common language interfaces support the following:

• PHP,
• ASP,
• mod_perl,
• mod_python,
• and Tcl.

Popular authentication modules include:

• mod_access,
• mod_auth,
• mod_digest.

Other features include SSL and TLS support (mod_ssl), a proxy module. Apache can also host URL rewriter (also known as a rewrite engine, implemented under mod_rewrite), custom log files (mod_log_config), and filtering support (mod_include and mod_ext_filter).

Apache most common implementation

Apache is often run together with MySQL databse and the PHP/Perl/Python programming languages.

Apache supported operating systems

The application is available for a wide variety of operating systems, including Unix, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Novell NetWare, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.

Download Apache HTTP Web Server

 http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi