Book excerpt: Sams Teach Yourself Apache in 24 Hours covers the installation, configuration, and ongoing administration of the Apache Web server, the most popular Internet Web server. It covers both the 1.3 and the new 2.0 versions of Apache. Using a hands-on, task-oriented format, it concentrates on the most popular features and common quirks of the server. The first part of the book helps the reader build, configure, and get started with Apache. After completing these chapters the reader will be able to start, stop, and monitor the Web server. He also will be able to serve both static content and dynamic content, customize the logs, and restrict access to certain parts of the Web server. The second part of the book explains in detail the architecture of Apache and how to extend the server via third-party modules like PHP and Tomcat. It covers server performance and scalability, content management, and how to set up a secure server with SSL.