Installing Apache on Windows

By Michael J. Ross
2008-02-20


Configuring Apache
Apache's configuration files are stored in its "conf" directory, and httpd.conf is the primary configuration file. This is where you will make most if not all of your customizations to Apache's configuration. For instance, if you plan on using RewriteRule commands in any.htaccess files, then in your httpd.conf file, in the LoadModule section, uncomment the command "LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so".

To activate any configuration change, restart Apache. Then check the aforesaid log file for any errors or warnings.

Directory access is initially set to be extremely restrictive. Consequently, if you use the default configuration and try to have Apache serve a local Web page outside of its default DocumentRoot (C:\Program Files\Apache\htdocs), then it will give you an error message that you do not have permission to access the file. To resolve this, find the "" section in httpd.conf, and change "AllowOverride None" to "AllowOverride All", and "Deny from all" to "Allow from all".

I recommend that you use comments to document, for your future reference, any changes that you make within httpd.conf. Also, make and verify each configuration change individually, thereby making it much easier to determine which change may be causing a problem. Lastly, new entries can usually be grouped at the bottom of the file. Continuing the example of using the HTTP rewrite module, to specify the rewrite log file and log level, you could add the following two commands at the bottom of httpd.conf:

RewriteLog rewritelog.txt
RewriteLogLevel 3

If you use Firefox as your Web browser, then you may notice that every time you start Firefox, Apache reports an error, in triplicate, that it cannot find htdocs/favicon.ico. To resolve this problem, if you chose to install the Apache manual, then simply copy the file manual\images\favicon.ico into the htdocs directory. Or simply create an empty file htdocs/favicon.ico (the command "echo. > favicon.ico" will suffice).


Tutorial Pages:
» Installing Apache on Windows
» Apache Already Installed?
» Downloading Apache
» Installing Apache
» Testing Apache
» Configuring Apache
» More Resources

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