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Add A Web Server

Whether you just want to do some volunteer work creating a web site for a local organization, or you want to get into serious web development, adding a web server to your computer provides you with the opportunity to do the development work without needing a web hosting account.

It also makes it easier to test web sites locally before uploading your files to a "real" web hosting company server.

Installing a web server when you're running linux is really easy - most linux distributions contain web, ftp, mail, and other servers, with a ckick-to-install GUI.

Windows ... not so much. There are two main web servers out there (Microsoft's IIS doesn't count because almost nobody uses it)
  1. Apache Web Server (link)

  2. nginx Web Server (link)
Do NOT use the Bitnami WAMP Stack. It has problems, and doesn't uninstall properly.

Much the same applies to WampServer and XAMMP.

That's why I opted for nginx. It's hard to set up, you'll be fiddling around a bit to the get php cgi interpreter set up, but once it's running, it works like a charm.

Once you get your web server running, you can point your web browser to it by entering your computer's ip address in the browser.

Since most users will be running Windows, here's how to do it:
  1. Make sure you've started your local web server.
  2. Open up a command prompt.
  3. Type "ipconfig /all" (note: there's a space before the "/all") and press enter.
  4. You should see your local machine's network address as follows:
    IPv4 Address. . . . . . . 192.158.0.nnn (where "nnn" is a number between 0 and 255).
  5. Enter that number in your web browser, wireless tablet, or smartphone to open your local web site (if you haven't installed any web pages, you should see a default page).
You can use any plain text editor to create your web sites.

When it comes time to upload your creations, you can use either your web host's cPanel web interface, of an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program to upload your site to the public-facing web server.

Linux comes with many FTP programs. For Windows, you can use the free WinSCP. (link)

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Email: barbra@lowvisioncomputing.com

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