Preface

Apache: The Definitive Guide is principally about the Apache web server software. We explain what a web server is and how it works, but our assumption is that most of our readers have used the World Wide Web and understand in practical terms how it works, and that they are now thinking about running their own servers to offer material to the hungry masses.

This book takes the reader through the process of acquiring, compiling, installing, configuring, and modifying Apache. We exercise most of the package's functions by showing a set of example sites that take a reasonably typical web business—in our case, a postcard publisher—through a process of development and increasing complexity. However, we have deliberately not tried to make each site more complicated than the last. Most of the chapters refer to an illustrative site that is as simple as we could make it. Each site is pretty well self-contained so that the reader can refer to it while following the text without having to disentangle the meat there from extraneous vegetables. If desired, it is perfectly possible to install and run each site on a suitable system.

Perhaps it is worth saying what this book is not. It is not a manual, in the sense of formally documenting every command—such a manual exists on the Apache site and has been much improved with Version 1.3; we assume that if you want to use Apache, you will download it and keep it at hand. Rather, if the manual is a roadmap that tells you how to get somewhere, this book tries to be a tourist guide that tells you why you might want to make the journey.

It also is not a book about HTML or creating web pages, or one about web security or even about running a web site. These are all complex subjects that should either be treated thoroughly or left alone. A compact, readable book that dealt thoroughly with all these topics would be most desirable.

A webmaster's library, however, is likely to be much bigger. It might include books on the following topics:

• The Web and how it works

• HTML—what you can do with it

• How to decide what sort of web site you want, how to organize it, and how to protect it

• How to implement the site you want using one of the available servers (for instance, Apache)

• Handbooks on Java, Perl, and other languages

• Security

Apache: The Definitive Guide is just one of the six or so possible titles in the fourth category.

Apache is a versatile package and is becoming more versatile every day, so we have not tried to illustrate every possible combination of commands; that would require a book of a million pages or so. Rather, we have tried to suggest lines of development that a typical webmaster should be able to follow once an understanding of the basic concepts is achieved.

As with the first edition, writing the book was something of a race with Apache's developers. We wanted to be ready as soon as Version 1.3 was stable, but not before the developers had finished adding new features. Unfortunately, although 1.3 was in "feature freeze" from early 1998 on, we could not be sure that new features might not become necessary to fix newly discovered problems.

In many of the examples that follow, the motivation for what we make Apache do is simple enough and requires little explanation (for example, the different index formats in Chapter 7). Elsewhere, we feel that the webmaster needs to be aware of wider issues (for instance, the security issues discussed in Chapter 13) before making sensible decisions about his or her site's configuration, and we have not hesitated to branch out to deal with them.