Even better, new technologies have made it a lot easier to setup a local web development system on any PC. Ampps, which stands for Apache MySQL PHP Python Softalicious, is a free web development environment for the Windows and Mac OS X operating systems that can be installed with just a few clicks. Once up and running, it is up to the user to install web applications from the local admin interface. The program can install 260 web applications that include highlights such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, and lesser known applications such as the course management system Moodle, several types of Wikipedia-like applications or feed aggregators such as Gregarius.

When you first start the program after installation you’ll get into the admin console where you can configure Apache, MySQL and PHP, and start, stop and restart the services.

Links in the form of icons open the local web administration interface or the apps that are currently up and running.

The web admin interface displays a list of application categories on the left, and links to core admin pages to the right. Here you can install and maintain databases, manage and add domains, edit general settings or access PHP and Perl information.

To install a web application, you click on the download button next to it to bring up a page with detailed information about it. You can install the script right away, or look at features and screenshots, open a demo page or access ratings and reviews.

A click on install opens the software setup page with all information filled out automatically. While it is possible to run the setup with the selected values, it is suggested to change at least the admin username or password if required.

A click on Install on the page downloads and installs the latest package automatically on the local system. You can thereafter open the new application to work with it.

What sets Ampps apart from other solutions like WordPress Portable, XAMPP or Wampserver are the applications that the program ships with. The inclusion of phpMyAdmin and SQlite Manager is also a great help in importing existing data into the local development environment.

Web Developers and users who want to run web applications locally can make use of Ampps to do so. Ampps is available for Windows and Mac OS X. Downloads are offered at the developer website.

The application is available for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows, and needs to be installed before it can be started for the first time. The application pulls the latest program information from Microsoft before it displays them in the interface.

The installer displays the three core categories Spotlight, Products and Applications upon start. Spotlight is merely a selection of products and applications that Microsoft recommends the most.

Available in this group are for instance Microsoft WebMatrix, a free tool to build, test and deploy web sites, the DotNetNuke Community Edition, and the content management systems Joomla and Drupal.

Each item is displayed with its name and icon, release data and an Install option.

A double-click on an entry opens a page with information about the selected product. The page offers a short description and lists the publisher, size, version and release date. The publisher is linked, and a double-click opens the website in the default web browser.

A click on the add button adds the program to the installation queue. The number of items are displayed in the lower left corner of the screen. The add button turns into a remove button once an item has been added. Users work their way through the list, add programs they need to the installation queue to install everything in one go in the end.

Web Platform Installer recognizes already installed programs and applications and will display installed instead of the add button in this case.

The two core groups Products and Applications are both divided into subgroups. Products for instance is divided into Server, Frameworks, Database and Tools, while Applications in Blogs, CMS, eCommerce, Forums, Galleries, Tools and Wiki.

Products concentrate on Microsoft products, like the IIS Server, the .NET Framework or the database SQL Server Express. Applications on the other hand run on the products, examples are the blogging platform WordPress, the phpBB forum or Gallery Server Pro.

The preferred language for selected products and applications can be changed in the options. The options are also the place to select the preferred web server.

The Web Platform Installer installs necessary dependencies automatically to make sure that developers end up with a complete working product, and do not need to download and install other products before they can run their selected applications.

Web developers who use Microsoft software for development can install all products that they work with from within the application. This saves time and ensures that the latest versions and all dependencies are installed on the system. It furthermore simplifies the installation of a web development environment.

Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer is available for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.

Here is how it works. Weezo will run a configuration script on the first startup. The script will start the core services and perform connection checks to ensure that the server is accessible from a local network and the Internet.

weezo

A free Weezo account can be created during setup of the server. The account offers the advantage that a permanent url is associated with it which can be used to access the server. This is similar to a service that offers a permanent domain name for dynamic IPs. It is possible to use the program anonymously, but this means that users connected to the computer need the right IP address to do so.

The Weezo server interface is then started on the computer, providing the means to configure the the shared contents and users as well as core configuration options and an activity monitor that displays information about logged in users and server status changes.

All resorts around user groups and resources. Groups are used to allow or block access to resources. The administrator for instance has access to all resources by default while the public group does not.

Groups are protected with passwords and can be further protected by adding allowed IPs. Options to provide a distinct website theme, sounds and sticky notes are provided as well.

Resources are the core of the server. Here it is possible to enable file access and sharing, blog and websites, communication modules like chat or webcam, bookmarks, web TV, a web proxy routing traffic through the Weezo website and additional modules.

Some interesting resources are the following:

• Photos Album: Share photos with anyone connecting to the server.
• Music and Videos: Listen to music or watch videos remotely, great for sharing music and videos with friends.
• RSS Reader, bookmarks: Access and share RSS feeds and bookmarks easily wherever you are

music player

One click install / download options are provided for popular web scripts such as WordPress, Joomla or phpBB even though they are not always offered in the latest version. MySQL can be installed as well as it is a requirement for several of the scripts.

remote access server

Some modules were not completely translated into English, only offered in French. WordPress for instance was available in French. It was however no problem to change the configuration files on the local system to change the language to English. This is also the way to update scripts to their latest versions.

Admins have direct access to MySQL, phpMyAdmin, the Apache configuration and pretty much every other server configuration file. Helpful for instance to import a database or make modifications to the remote server.

Ports can be changed in the configuration, the default port is 80. It is furthermore possible to use a secure connection (SSL) to connect to the server.

Screenshots:

remote access server

remote desktop

remote file explorer

rss feed sharing

server login

Weezo offers a one-click installation server for web scripts, file sharing and remote file access. It provides rights management and an easy to understand admin interface that can be used to configure most, but not all, of the options of the server.

Some operations require manual configuration changes, which definitely will be a problem for inexperienced users. There is for instance no option to update WordPress to the latest version from within the admin interface.

Weezo is available for download at the developer’s website.

Whatever it is they allow the developer or user to create, modify or offer contents locally in a safe environment. We have covered quite a few free server applications in the past including Windows File Server, the Apache server Wampserver and the Home Web Server

All had in common that they were relatively easy to setup and configure. Fortitude HTTP is another web server for the Windows operating system that makes a web server available on Windows after installation.

The web server is immediately functional after installation and it is possible to connect to example websites by pointing the web browser to http://localhost/.

fortitude http web server

The http management console is used to configure the web server locally. It displays the hosted websites, their settings and global settings in the left sidebar.

host website

New websites can be added easily by right-clicking the websites entry and selecting Configure from the context menu. Here it is possible to delete, add and edit websites.

A name, port, root directory and description can be added in the web site creation menu. Each website can be configured individually from a maximum connection limit and buffer size to the server admin email, root login details, scripting engines (supported are python, php, perl and vbs), SSI and CGI.

The global settings are identical to the local ones, with the difference that they are applicable for all web servers.

The only thing missing is a database server like MySQL which needs to be installed separately.

Fortitude HTTP is an easy to setup web server for Windows. The lack of MySQL or a comparable database makes is negative, everything else is there to get started developing or maintaining websites right away.

The web server is available for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Email notification is just one option to react on the modification of files on the server as it is also possible to enable the automatic repair mode which will replace the modified file on the web server with the local copy.

The configuration of the monitored files is unfortunately not as easy as it could be. It is for instance only possible to select single files on the local computer system to link them to files on the ftp server. The ftp server path needs to be added manually.

An option to add a directory with all its files and an option to automatically link that directory to a specific path would be more than welcome. It currently takes a long time to add all files of a website to the monitored file listing.

Another missing option would be to tell the program to backup a specific folder of an ftp server and configure the program automatically.

The program runs in the system background after configuration of the files that the user wants to monitor. Log files are generated automatically whenever a file was modified on the web server.

Websites Cop can be downloaded from the developer’s homepage. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

OneHTTPD is a basic file server that is available for Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems. The server has a size of less than 70 Kilobytes. It can be configured from the command line or by dragging and dropping a directory on the executable in Windows.

The basic command to start the file server is onehttpd directory with directory being a locally accessible folder. Parameters are provided to change the port the server is listening on and the level of status messages that are displayed in the command line window. OneHTTPD can be used to run a file server in less than a minute which is the greatest strength of the application.

It lacks several features like user authorization or access filters that most users might require from their file server. Windows users with those requirements might want to take a look at HTTP File Server which supports authentication. OneHTTPD Server can be downloaded from the project page at Google Code.

Configuration of Stream Media is actually pretty simple. All that it takes is to define a home or root directory for the streaming media server that points to a path on the local hard drive of the computer. Every supported media file will be automatically displayed in the client access area with the possibility to add files easily by simply moving them into the root folder or a subfolder.

A wide variety of media formats are supported by the media server. This includes video formats like flv, avi, rm or mp4 and audio formats like mp3 or aac. The server can be accessed over the start page of the Opera Unite user which can be accessed from the operaunite.com page. The administrator can password protect the media server so that only authorized users can access it. It is also possible to change the visibility of the service.

Media files that are provided at the media server can be viewed directly in the web browser or downloaded to the local computer system. It is interesting that clients can access Opera Unite applications from within any modern web browser.

Opera users who want to provide media streaming need to make sure that they have the capabilities to do so. It usually is not a problem to offer access to a handful of users but someone with a 128Kbit upload stream will not be able to stream it simultaneously to lots of connected users.

Stream Media is an interesting Opera Unite application which can be used to quickly showcase videos and audio files to a selected user group. It can only be installed in versions of Opera that support Opera Unite. Opera users with Opera Unite enabled can visit the application’s profile page at the Opera website to install it directly in the web browser. First time Opera Unite users need an Opera user account before they can install the application.

This can be problematic for webmasters who face the same DNS propagation wait time especially if they want to make sure that the website works fine at the new hosting location. There is one easy way of accessing the website at the new web server even if the DNS is still pointing to the old: The Hosts file.

The Hosts file can be used to map a domain name to an IP address. All that needs to be done to work with a website before DNS propagation is to map the domain name to the new IP address. Here is how this is done in the Windows operating system.

The Hosts file in Windows is located at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\Hosts

You might need to change the rights of the current logged in user first so that the file becomes writable.

All you should see when opening the Hosts file with a text editor is a comment section on top unless someone else has already added new entries to it.

New entries to the Hosts file can be added after the last line. To do that add the IP address of the new server and then the domain name of the website like 96.30.22.116 acerliquid.net with a blank in between. All programs of the operating system will now open the website using the new IP address even if the DNS servers are still routing to the old server. This gives webmasters an excellent opportunity to edit these websites before the DNS propagation has finished.

That’s highly problematic and reduced the experience of many visitors that discovered the site for the first time. Ghacks will be up and running on the new server in less than eight hours if everything works out as planned. You will then be able to enjoy a better connection to the web server that will serve the website faster to your local computer system. It can take between 24-48 hours before all DNS servers have propagated the changes and are routing users to the new server and not the old one.

The worst case scenario is that something goes terribly wrong during migration which could mean a short, medium or long outage or even a transfer back to the old dedicated server for the time being until the problems have been sorted out.

There will be no more posts until the migration is completed. Comments that are posted today might not be taken over to the new website as well. If you want to contact me use the contact form on the top. Thanks for your patience and lets hope for the best!

It has been created by the same developer who created Tweet My PC, a software program that would accept commands from a Twitter account to manage the computer system automatically.

Remind Me About is different as it comes as a service offered by the software developer and also as a version that can be installed on a server to run it more privately. It basically works the following way: The user sends a message to a Twitter account that has been created to handle the reminders. These reminders will be stored in a database on the web server running the scripts. Another php script will be checking the database frequently for reminders that are ready to be send out. If those reminders are found they are send out using the same Twitter account.

The php scripts have not been published yet officially by the developer but are going to be released soon. They do require a web server that supports php, MySQL databases and Cron jobs. Running the script on a web server can make sense for several reasons including Twitter Api limitations but also privacy or security related concerns.

The script will be published by the developer soon. As of now only the reminder service setup by the developer is available. No Twitter information (other than following and being followed by the Twitter user the service is running on) are required to use it though.

A lot of research should go into such a decision and that’s what I did. One tip that I would like to pass on is to take a look at the dedicated server forum over at Webhostingtalk. Web hosting companies post special offers in that forum that will give you benefits such as double bandwidth, server memory or discounts on the price.

My business partner and I moved our Windows 7 website recently from a hosting company in the UK to Wiredtree in the US using one of the discounts found in the forum to get a great managed server for a good price and absolute reliable and fast support.

I decided to do the same and order a managed server at Wiredtree. Here is what I got for the yearly price of $2315.8 (second year will be $199 less due to setup costs which would reduce the price of the server by $25 per month for its lifetime which means it pays of after eight months). I got a deal with double server memory, bandwidth and a discount of $70.

Intel Core i7
12GB DDR3
Primary Disk:250GB 7.2k RPM SATAII 16MB Cache

Plan is to add another server with a faster hard drive (raid I suppose) that will run the database eventually. The server is currently setup by the Wiredtree support team who will also handle the migration of the website. It could mean some downtime in the next days but the website will definitely benefit from the new server with speed improvements.

Opera Unite is modularized and comes with so called services that can be installed to extend the functionality. This may remind many users of Firefox add-ons but it is actually a completely different technology that requires more than just clicking on an install link. Currently seven services are offered, they are:

• Media Player – Accessing the music collection from anywhere on the Internet.
• File Sharing – A way of sharing files directly between users.
• Fridge – A note leaving application that other people can use to leave notes on a computer system.
• Web Server – Hosting a web server from the local computer system.
• Photo Sharing – Share photos without uploading them first.
• The Lounge – A chat interface hosted on a computer system.

The Opera team has created a user guide to get users started with Opera Unite. Opera Unite is available as a separate preview release which can be downloaded for all supported operating systems from the Opera Labs website. The download will actually replace the current version of Opera 10 if the user decides to install it in the same installation directory.

Opera Unite is then available in the left panel after installation. Starting the actual home server requires an Opera account. A homeaddress is assigned to every user signing up for Opera Unite in the from “http://computername.username.operaunite.com/” with the user selecting the computer name. The username will be the Opera username.

Once that has been setup the service that has been selected by the user gets setup. Setup of the file sharing module for example requires the selection of a directory on the local computer that will be used for that purpose. Each service that has been activated can then be accessed from the created homepage if the user accessing it has sufficient rights to do so.

The file sharing page on the server is for example protected by a password by default which can be changed in the root home directory. It offers three different access rights which make it possible to allow public access (everyone can access them), private access (only the root user can access the files) or password protected access.

Verdict:

Opera Unite offers something that web browsers do not offer out of the box. The usefulness of the service on the other hand depends largely on the user’s system configuration. If the user runs an home server then it might not be needed to run Opera Unite as well. Users who prefer to access everything from one program might find Opera Unite helpful especially if the developers and users begin to add new modules to the service. Not really a reinvention of the Internet but a nice service nevertheless.

Home Web Server makes it possible to run websites on the local computer system. The web server supports a wide variety of options including php, cgi and isapi support next to SSL connections and private member directories. Not everything is preinstalled on the other hand. It is for example necessary to download PHP compiler from the official PHP website to add PHP support.

Basic HTML websites are on the other hand available by default. The root of the web server can be accessed locally by opening http://127.0.0.1/ in the web browser if the connection is established from the local computer. Users from the local network or remote networks need to use the local or Internet IP to connect to the web server.

Many aspects of the web server can be configured in the options including connection limits and timeouts, domain and root aliases, connection logging, supported mime types or redirects.

Home Web Server provides extensive options that should suite the needs of most users who want to install a web server on their computer. Alternatives are Quick PHP Web Server, XAMPP web server or the Portable Web Server.

The web server can be downloaded in various configurations. The various configurations range from a bare-bone Apache web server to a web server supporting MySQL, SQLite, Pearl and PHP. The configuration only has an effect on the type of applications that can be run on the web server. Most users will probably need at least MySQL and PHP support to run their websites locally.

The web server can be started by double-clicking on the Server2Go.exe executable file in the root directory of the server. This will load the various web server modules and display a start page in the web browser. The pms_config.ini file can be used to change various settings of the web server including the default web browser, the port and whether the modules like MySQL or PHP should be started as well.

The actual files of a website are placed in the htdocs directory of the web server. Loading them can be as easy as pointing your browser to 127.0.0.1:4001 or some subdirectory of it depending on the type of site.

MySQL comes with phpMyAdmin which is accessible from the main interface of the web server. Server2Go offers an uncomplicated way to run a web server, it is especially helpful in environments where software installations are restricted.

That’s not all however but it should give an example how easy it is to make files available online with HTTP File Server which was already reviewed about two years ago for the first time here at Ghacks. A lot has changed in the last two years.

The folders and files that get picked by the user are available immediately online. It’s probably a good idea to test the server locally and remotely before giving the remote IP to someone else. It might on the other hand not be necessary to hand out the remote IP if files should only be accessible by yourself.

The file server comes with a basic music player that can stream and play music directly without downloading the music first. Everything else is downloaded before it can be accessed.

Many possibilities to secure and restrict access can be configured in HTTP File Server. The system administrator can create user accounts and define files or folders that are restricted to those users. Additional possibilities include speed limits or restrictions by IP.

The file server supports real and virtual folders and can be configured to allow file uploads as well.

The main advantage of HTTP File Server is the ease of use and the portability of the application. The main site contains the latest release version of the server software, the forums provide access to the latest beta releases which provide additional functionality and bugfixes.

This log files can become huge if you have a popular website. The current size of the Ghacks log file is 45 Gigabytes. If it continues growing in that pace the web server will run out of hard disk space pretty soon.

The first problem was to figure out how to backup the 45 Gigabyte file on the web server since I did not want to loose all the data stored within. The idea was born to compress the Apache web server log file first and then reduce it to a few Kilobytes with the echo command.

The Apache web server log files are stored in the /var/log/apache2 directory on the Debian dedicated server. The first command to issue would compress the contents of the apache2 directory into multiple tar files if the compressed file reaches a size maximum. This makes it easier to transfer files to another computer.

tar -cz directory | split -d -b 1024m - destination.tgz

Directory is the source directory where the Apache web server log files reside and destination.tgz is the name of the to be created compressed file. It is important to note that you might need to stop the Apache web server for the operation to succeed because the compression utility will stop if files get changed during procession.

The last thing that is to be done is to clear the original Apache web server log files in the log files directory. This can be done with the following command even if Apache is running.

echo " " > /var/log/apache2/filename.log

This simply overwrites the contents of the file. Please note again that some Linux distributions use another directory structure and that the log files can be located in another directory on the server.
This takes only a few seconds and the log file will be cleared from all contents afterwards.

Then it is just a matter of transferring the various compressed archives to another computer.

I have detailed the process of installing and running a local Apache web server before but this method puts some strain on the system and is probably an overkill for a quick test run to see that the scripts are working correctly.

Quick PHP provides an answer. It is a standalone portable web server that does not require the installation of additional packages in its core version. The software creates a server that has a root directory that can be specified and a local port that has to be used to load the php scripts.

The core version can be extended to include PHP extensions for MySQL support with PHP.ini or can even be placed in the php installation folder that can be downloaded from the official php website.

Quick PHP is portable which makes it an ideal candidate for an USB Stick. The only requirements are an Internet Browser and either Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista.

After outlining the main advantages of running a torrent client from a web server I would like to point out that there are also some disadvantages. If you happen to download “questionable” torrents they can be traced easily back to you. You rent the web server, you pay the bills and a simple whois can reveal your real name, address and phone number in a matter of seconds. The conclusion is that you can perfectly use it to distribute your own files (or share files with close friends) but should not consider downloading copyrighted files with it.

Back to the client that I’m going to introduce now. It is called Torrentflux and requires a *nix system, PHP, MySQL and Python 2.2 or higher. A version for Windows is also available for those who run a Windows server.

Torrentflux has many options that can be compared to the options of popular clients such as uTorrent or Azureus.

• Upload Torrents via URL or File Upload
• Start, Stop, and Delete Torrents with a click
• Advanced Torrent start options (ports, speeds, etc.)
• Multi-user interface
• RSS Feeds, download Torrents files with a click
• View Download Progress of all torrents at a glance
• View drive space at a glance
• View Torrent file meta information
• Built-in User management and Security
• Private Messaging
• Themes (selectable per user)
• Upload History
• Detailed User Administration
• Admin Searchable Logs
• Advanced Torrent Search (many major sites included)
• Cookie support at the user level for private trackers
• Queue Manager
• Maketorrent — supports making torrents
• Language Support

Installation for Torrentflux does not take long, just follow the following easy steps:

Unpack the files from the archive. Use tar -zxvf torrentflux.tar.gz if you the files are already on your web server or tools like Winrar or Winzip to unpack them in Windows.
Create a new database on your server. The easiest way to do this is use MySQLAdmin to create the new database and the new user who has access to it.
Import the SQL file named mysql_torrentflux.sql into the new database
Edit the file config.php with the values for the new database. (Username, Password, Host and name of database)
Upload the contents of the HTML folder to your web server. Create a new directory that is read and writeable. Chmod it to 777 if necessary.
The first time you run the torrent client you are asked to define a username and password for the super admin. Make sure you remember that.
Add the directory created under 5 to the path that is showing up at first startup. Make sure all settings have a green light next to them. If that is the case everything should be working fine. If not you have to fix this before you can continue.

That is it. You successfully installed the bittorrent client on your web server.

Download Xampp for Windows and install it on your system. It does not matter if you install the modules as services, you can activate them as well by opening the control panel. (start apache) Once installed the webserver should be accessible by typing in http://localhost or http://yourdynamicip; You can look up your dynamic ip using my ip lookup script. Hosting files is as easy, just upload all the files that you want to share into the subfolder htdocs or create a subfolder and add the files to it.

Access the subfolder by appending /subfolder/ to the url that you want to access. You can add html and php files as well and those can be accessed as well similar to those files on other websites. It is easy to secure folders or the complete server using so called .htaccess files. Use the htaccess generator and add the generated files to your directories that you want to protect.

There is one last thing that can be optimized. It is difficulty for others to access your webserver if you have dynamic IPs. To counter this you could use a free service like DynDNS which adds a static dns to your IP. Friends and everyone else who should access the webserver can then use the dynamic dns which looks something like subdomain.dyndns.bz instead of the dynamic IP address.