Configuring a server
Server configuration covers a wide range of topics (ranging from security to performance to maintenance) and it would take a library of books to cover all of them. In this section, we describe the different server applications that can be configured and tuned. References are provided to books and websites for further reading. Always test configuration changes on a test server before modifying a production server. A faulty configuration can cause the server applications to cease working.
Apache
Apache, the most popular web server software, is likely running on your server. Other web server software includes Internet Information Services (IIS) from Microsoft, lighttpd, and nginx. With a typical Apache installation, configuration is stored in two or three different locations. There is a server-wide configuration file (often named apache2.conf or httpd.conf). This file includes other configuration files that are specific to a particular site, web application, or module. On...
