Installing a Web Server

To develop and test dynamic web pages, you need a functioning web server. This chapter describes how most Windows users can install and use a Microsoft web server on their local computer.

If you’re a Windows user and you want to develop ColdFusion sites, you can use the web server included in the developer edition of the Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 application server, which you can install and use for free. For more information, see Setup for Sample ColdFusion Site.

If you’re a Macintosh user, you can use a web server on a network computer or a web hosting company. If you want to develop PHP applications, you can use the Apache web server already installed on your Macintosh.

This chapter contains the following sections:

Getting started

Installing Internet Information Server

Testing IIS

Testing the Macintosh web server (PHP developers)

Web server basics