How do I set up Apache 2.x on Windows XP?

Information on the latest versions of Apache can be found on the web site of the Apache web server at http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi. For Windows installations you should download the version of Apache for Windows with the .msi extension. This is a single Microsoft Installer file, which contains a ready-to-run version of Apache.

Run the Apache .msi file you downloaded above. The installation will ask you for these things:

1. Network Domain. Enter the DNS domain in which your server is or will be registered in. For example, if your server's full DNS name is server.mydomain.net, you would type mydomain.net here.

2. Server Name. Your server's full DNS name. From the example above, you would type server.mydomain.net here.

3. Administrator's Email Address. Enter the server administrator's or webmaster's email address here. This address will be displayed along with error messages to the client by default.

4. For whom to install Apache Select for All Users, on Port 80, as a Service - Recommended if you'd like your new Apache to listen at port 80 for incoming traffic. It will run as a service (that is, Apache will run even if no one is logged in on the server at the moment) Select only for the Current User, on Port 8080, when started Manually if you'd like to install Apache for your personal experimenting or if you already have another WWW server running on port 80.

5. The installation type. Select Typical for everything except the source code and libraries for module development. With Custom you can specify what to install. A full install will require about 13 megabytes of free disk space. This does not include the size of your web site(s).

6. Where to install. The default path is C:\Program Files\Apache Group under which a directory called Apache2 will be created by default.

After installing Apache, you must edit the configuration files in the conf subdirectory as required. These files will be configured during the installation so that Apache is ready to be run from the directory it was installed into, with the documents server from the subdirectory htdocs. There are lots of other options which you should set before you really start using Apache. However, to get started quickly, the files should work as installed.