Apache is far and away the most widely used web server platform in the world. This versatile server runs more than half of the world's existing web sites. Apache is both free and rock-solid, running more than 21 million web sites ranging from huge e-commerce operations to corporate intranets and smaller hobby sites. With this new third edition of Apache: The Definitive Guide, web administrators new to Apache will come up to speed quickly, and experienced administrators will find the logically organized, concise reference sections indispensable, and system programmers interested in customizing their servers will rely on the chapters on the API and Apache modules. Updated to cover the changes in Apache's latest release, 2.0, as well as Apache 1.3, this useful guide discusses how to obtain, set up, secure, modify, and troubleshoot the Apache software on both Unix and Windows systems. Dozens of clearly written examples provide the answers to the real-world issues that Apache administrators face everyday. In addition to covering the installation and configuration of mod_perl and Tomcat, the book examines PHP, Cocoon, and other new technologies that are associated with the Apache web server. Additional coverage of security and the Apache 2.0 API make Apache: The Definitive Guide, Third Edition essential documentation for the world's most popular web server.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 15 Ratings

Waste of paper - 2006-12-01
Reviewer Rating:
Most of the time you can trust O'Reilly technical books. But this dog should be drug out back and shot. It's out of date, it's poorly written, it meanders all over the place. I'm pretty tolerant of technical writing as long as I'm learning what I need to along the way. But at a time when I was highly motivated to get up to speed on Apache I literally gave up and threw this on the floor in frustration. Buy any other book on Apache. This one sucks.

This book is not a tutorial. - 2006-07-04
Reviewer Rating:
This book is not a tutorial on Apache. Forget about this book if you're seeking to implement the ubiquitous LAMP (Linux, Apache, MYSQL, PHP) combination. Perhaps you wish to complement your pursuit of a computer science degree with some resume enhancing practical skills. Or perhaps you're a seeking some IT certifications, or perhaps you're a hobbyist web developer - in all cases this book contains nothing that couldn't be freely found on an internet search engine. Most of the book's chapters consist of a series of Apache's features with each followed by a cryptic discussion that doesn't actually teach you anything. So unless you're a Apache expert looking for a handy reference to keep close at hand then please buy something else. Like a book that actually does the job of teaching you to do something with Apache.

Helpful, but questionable... - 2008-09-11
Reviewer Rating:
This book reads like a journal of somebody who has never configured a web server at all, literally saying things like, "We tried this, and we got this error message". While the author is trying to create a noob friendly book here, it comes off like it was written by noobs (which probably isn't actually the case).

There are also some questionable things, for example, they create a shell script that must run in a particular directory. They actually say "you must cd to the directory first" and then use the shell built-in 'pwd' instead of the dot operator for the current directory -- twice on one line! This comes off as pretty noobish to me. In the old days, this would cause 300,000 lines of kernel code to execute an external program and return, but at least the shell implements pwd as a builtin these days. Still, it was one of those small things that makes you wonder about a book...

Despite this, the book IS useful for a noob to learn some Apache basics and make the conf files more readable. I had a 10 year old Apache Bible with Y2K material in it that in some ways was more helpful. Still, I am still reading the relevant sections and the book is helping me get a task done at work.

This book served its purpose. - 2009-08-09
Reviewer Rating:
Now you may think that there are better books out there. And there maybe. However this book is a "five star" book. I bought this book for a beginning apache class. We were able to follow the instructions and down load the Apache server from the Internet. The only problem we had was with the NIS system that was not anticipated in this book. It was a lot more important to use this book to read the flat files and see how they were related to each other. The section on Extra Modules (chapter 12) gave a way to improve the server and go outside the scope of this book. This book covered more details than I was looking for; this ways different people can use the book to target their particular needs. You can safely say:

"This book has everything you need to set up an apache server."


Apache Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for Apache Administrators

Apache - book review - 2008-11-30
Reviewer Rating:
Seller was very good for pricing, shipping, delivery and condition (new).

Excellent book, cover unix and windows install and configuration.

Just be sure to get the latest version.

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