Web virtual-hosting system using Apache 2

Abstract

Since the creation of the World Wide Web in the early part of the 1990s the number of Web Sites had increased from the single site hosted by Tim Berners-Lee to an estimated 2,000,000 distinct sites by 2009. The Netcraft Web Server Survey provides an interesting history, complete with graphs and information broken down by, amongst other things, the server software used to host each site.

In 1996 the Apache web server first took the number one spot from the then most commonly used web server at the time which was written by the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications. It has never relinquished that position and it is still the most popular web server software in use today with more than twice the market share of its nearest rival. This document describes how to install and use the Apache 2 web server in a variety of configurations including address and name based virtual hosting as well as how to integrate the Apache 2 web server with scripting languages such as Python and PHP.

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