Run Your Own Home Web Server

Running a home web server can be advantageous, or even the only solution depending on what you want to use it for.

All those dedicated web server providers do not help much for instance if all you want to do is to setup a web server for a home network.

Home Web Server is a software to run a web server on a local Windows computer system. It is developed by the same developer who created Home FTP Server which becomes obvious immediately after looking at the interfaces of both home server applications.

Home Web Server provides you with the means to run websites on a 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 pre-installed on the other hand. It is for example necessary to download a PHP compiler from the official PHP website to add PHP support to the server.

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.

New users find a variety of files on the website, a getting started pdf document for instance, and another for setting up PHP with the home server. I'd suggest you download those as well to avoid running into any issues while you are setting up the server.

It is suggested to read the getting started pdf document first as it acts as an introduction to the core features that the web server offers. It not only explains how to access the server, but also goes through the important features and settings that it offers.

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.

Verdict

Home Web Server offers a quick option to run a server on your local network. You may use it for development, file sharing, documentation, or other purposes.

Update: Home Web Server is no longer available. It seems to have been abandoned by its developer. We have uploaded the latest working version of the application to our own server. You can download it with a click on the following link: (Download Removed)

Note that we don't support the program in any way. Some of its functionality may not work properly anymore either, as the last version was released back in 2010.

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