Good local web server for Windows?

Offline web server for site testing

[semiaziz]

Hiya!
Am on a dial-up (ugh) on my girlfriend's Compaq laptop (guh) which has a Cyrix processor (Lordy, why me?) running Windows Me (argh). I'd like to convert all my relative links to absolute ones, but when I do that I won't be able to browse through my site offline to test it. Is there a good local personal web server available that's freeware, preferably?
thanks

[txbakers]

www.imatix.com has the xitami web server which is very nice for Windows.

Doesn't ME come with the microsoft pws? This works well for little sites. Even runs ASP code.

[knighty]

Foxserv is pretty good as it come pre-bundled with PHP,MySQL, Python etc

[semiaziz]

na, ME specifically does not come with PWS. You can install it but it's a real hassle and it takes up a ton of room. I'll give xitami a try, thanks

[DaveN]

ME comes with PWS ( Personal Web Server )I use it to demo shopping carts in asp.

DaveN

[BlobFisk]

On Peer Web Services do you have to configure a domain, or do you just point at the location on the hard drive and it will parse the ASP files?

For example, if you have an ASP file in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\scripts can you just point at that address and the ASP code will be parsed?

[stlouislouis]

Hi,

Word of warning on Foxserv. I downloaded and installed it on a Win2000 Pro box. Upon rebooting....machine would NOT boot.

Got an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD message. I'm not -- nor want to be -- a Windows expert. No matter what I tried, including restoring the Master Boot Record, my efforts to recover the drive were to no avail -- same BSOD message.

I wiped the drive to binary zeros and decided to forget about Foxserv.

Everything I had read on Foxserv was positive. At this point, I don't know or care what happened.

Don't want to spend any time talking about it -- just figured I would post a word of warning-- and advise everyone to back up the harddrive before trying to install Foxserv. Of course, Norton Ghost would be great to use for this.

FWIW,

Louis

[NameNick]

Hi,

is there a special reason why nobody recommend the #1 Webserver? In my opinion Apache is the first choice if you want to run a local web server.

For easy installation you should use PHPTriad (it's free) which cames along with Apache, PHP and MySQL.

Greetings NN

[dhdweb]

Can you run Apache on a windows box?

[NameNick]

dhdweb,

As far as I know Apache runs on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP. If you follow the download link on the Apache homepage you will find compiled Windows versions of Apache to download.

Greetings NN

[stlouislouis]

When setting up a webserver on one's local PC, would the links on one's local pages be pointing to www.mytestsite.com/whatever.htm or would the "C" drive be the document root instead of www.mytestsite.com?

What would one need to do to be able to run a webserver on their local box and not have to change links when migrating the site to a webserver?

Curious about this...never got that far with Foxserv.

Thanks,

Louis

[NameNick]

Hi Louis,

I refer to Apache web server. In the config file you can define http-hosts like www.mytestsite.com, mytestsite.com or mytestsite. The host definition contains all necessarily server paths such as www root, cgi-bin etc.

If you set c:/www/root/htdocs as your www root directory for the host mytestsite.com, the (right configuratet) web server will take the files from this directory if you call up mytestsite.com in your browser.

On my local PC I run the same site structure as on the web servers. No link changes are nesessary before uploading files or the hole site.

Greetings NN

[stlouislouis]

Thanks a lot, NameNick! I was wondering about that.

[ergophobe]

I would try to use whatever server is used on the live site. This is probably Apache which, for most things, has identical behavior in Win/Lin and great documentation. I've run it Win95, Win2000, Caldera Linux, Cobalt RAQ and FreeBSD and it works great everywhere.

Tom

[knighty]

>>I downloaded and installed it on a Win2000 Pro box

I also installed on win2000 pro and the installation ran smoothly

[ukgimp]

An easy to follow installation of Apache, php, perl and all of that kind of thing.

firepages.com.au

Blobfisk

If you have a file in the wwwroot folder you will need to have a server running (iis, pws, apache etc) then instead of typing

C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\scripts

you would use

[localhost...]

Cheers

[BlobFisk]

ukgimp:

Thanks a million - thats what I thought!

Cheers!

[onlineleben]

For local use I have tried OmniHTTPd Version 2.10 (from Omnicron). It is freeware and works on Windows 98/ME & NT/2K. The freeware version expires on Jan 1st, 2004 and includes PHP 4.2.2
It is easy to configure and doesn't use too many system resources.
Good luck.

[ergophobe]

OmniHTTPD is pretty good and real easy to set up, I agree, but I reiterate that I would install whatever you will be running live if possible.

Tom

[Knowles]

>>I downloaded and installed it on a Win2000 Pro box

I have installed in on ME and XP , I skipped 2k, and never once had a problem.

[sun818]

[localhost...] is fine if all your links are relative links. If your links are absolute, you have to edit your local DNS to point yourdomain.com to 127.0.0.1 (which is your localhost). You edit this file under \windows\system\hosts for ME. The disadvantage is that you have to adjust your the hosts file each time you wanted to see the remote site or local site. I suggest setting up two batch files that will automate that part for you.

[copongcopong]

For me, I would still recommend apache. Well it would still depends on what scripting language you would like to use. For me, php, mysql and apache works perfect as my test server on my Windows machine.

Their Configuration file are easy to tweak or set, just a litle knowledge about path and you're all set. =)