How To Install Your Own Web Server – Installing Apache HTTP Server

Posted by Stephane Brault on June 02, 2008 in Tutorials. Last modified on May 07, 2013.

Sometimes I like to have my own web server, whether it is for testing or development purposes. Since I use Windows XP or Vista on my personnal computer, my favorite setup is Windows, Apache, PHP and MySQL. This setup is also known as WAMP. And maybe you guessed it, the Linux equivalent of this setup is LAMP.

So in the first part of this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to install Apache’s HTTP server. The HTTP server is what serves the webpages (HTML files, images, css files, etc.) to web browsers upon request.

How To Install Apache HTTP Server
On MS Windows Server 2000, 2003, XP and Vista

Start by getting yourself a copy of Apache’s HTTP Server 2.0.x by clicking here. At the time of this writing, the latest version from the 2.0.x series is Apache 2.0.63 with OpenSSL 0.9.7 (msi file).

Execute the .MSI file in order to launch the installation. Hit the “Next” button until you see this screen and fill in the information as below (except for the email address of course!):

On the next screen, select the custom installation type and hit next once again. Next select the installation path for Apache’s HTTP server. I prefer using C:\ since the installer will automatically create a folder named “Apache2″ anyway (this isn’t true for Apache 2.2.x though). Leave all other default settings.

Click the Next button and then the Install button. Go get a coffee, this could take a few minutes.

Once the installation is completed, click the Finish button.

Now open your web browser to http://127.0.0.1 and if everything went correctly you should see this page:

That was easy wasn’t it?

Now stay tuned as we’ll install MySQL, a free database server.

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Tags: apache, http, mysql, php, wamp, windows

About Stephane Brault

Stephane is a web developer and system administrator with over 18 years of experience. Specialized in PHP programming and Linux server administration, he also provided development and consulting services to SMBs for several years before becoming an online entrepreneur.

8 responses so far ↓

1. Response by : How To Install Your Own Web Server - Installing MySQL 5 on Jun 3, 2008 at 5:40 am

[...] part of our tutorial on how to install your own home web server. In the first, you’ve seen how to install Apache HTTP Server on Windows. Now we’re going to see how to install MySQL, a free database [...]

2. Response by : Own To Install Your Own Web Server - Installing PHP on Jun 4, 2008 at 12:01 am

[...] the two previous posts, we’ve seen how to install Apache and MySQL on a Windows computer so you you should already have a working web server and database [...]

3. Response by : How To Install Your Own Web Server - MySQL Database Management on Jun 6, 2008 at 12:05 am

[...] you’ve followed the previous posts on How To Install Your Own Web Server, then you should now have a running WAMP installation [...]

4. Response by : How To Install Your Own Web Server - Installing phpMyAdmin on Jun 12, 2008 at 12:01 am

[...] This is finally the last post of this series on How To Install Your Own Web Server. In my last post I’ve shown you how to setup a virtual host and now we’re going to use [...]

5. Response by : prabhudarshan on Jun 27, 2008 at 5:03 am

hi
ok

6. Response by : Working With Apache’s Alias Directive on Jul 7, 2008 at 11:47 am

[...] A couple of weeks ago, I’ve post a series of tutorials on How To Install Your Own Web Server on Windows with Apache, PHP and MySQL. Today I’m going to sort of pick up where these tutorials left by introducing you to [...]

7. Response by : Ed Holland on Oct 26, 2009 at 3:38 am

Fantastic tutorials on getting a web server set up, probably the best explained I’ve seen about.

I was just curious as to whether it’s a requirement to have a dedicated machine to do this, or is it possible to run this on my desktop along side my day to day applications?

8. Response by : The Web Hosting Hero on Oct 26, 2009 at 12:30 pm

No you can do this on almost any version of Windows. I am not sure but I think there could be a few different steps with MySQL Server if you’re installing it on XP or Vista.