Configure a secure, lightweight, and open-source web server. Lighttpd is an enterprise-level free web server and best suited for highly performant websites.
Welcome to another blog post in the Web Server Solution Stack category. We have published many articles such as [Setup XAMPP and phpMyAdmin as localhost on Windows]3, Top 5 Open Source Web Server Solution Stacks In 2021, and some others. These articles demonstrated the setting up processes of various open source web servers along with the detailed guide articles. In fact, a webserver was introduced in the back 90s and since then it has gained utmost popularity in the digital world. There are many factors that are attached to serving content over the internet or intranet. However, a huge part of the digital industry is attached to the companies or communities that maintain web server solutions. Therefore, factors such as robustness, security, reliability, storage, data optimization and some other factors are the main pillars of an enterprise-level digital system.
In addition, open source community has developed many open source webservers and web proxy servers to enable the corporate sector to establish their own web servers to host business websites and software. Lighttpd web is a free and open source web server solution stack, designed especially for Linux machines. In this blog post, we will go through the Lighttpd by covering the following point.
What is Lighttpd?
Compared to other web servers like Apache and Nginx, the Lighttpd web server has a small memory footprint, so it provides effective management of the CPU-load. This lightweight web server provides advanced feature sets including FastCGI, SCGI, Auth, Output-Compression and URL-Rewriting, etc. It allows web applications written in any programming language to be used with the server. Lighttpd’s FastCGI can be configured to support PHP. Other than PHP it also supports other programming languages including Python, Perl, Ruby, and many more.
There are many open source web servers and web proxy servers but Lighttpd is on top of the list that is being widely used. This web server solution is very easy to set up and requires simple requirements such as Ubuntu 18.04. Moreover, those who wish to deploy this open source solution can download the latest release from this link. Above all, it supports many languages other than PHP such as Python, Ruby, Perl, and more. In addition, all the documentation is available regarding the development and deployment. Therefore, developers can find the source code on Github.
Benefits of Lightpd
In this section, we will go through the benefits and the provision that this open source web server offers. Therefore, If you are looking for a fast, efficient, and secure web server, then Lighttpd web server is the best choice for you. It doesn’t require a lot of memory and CPU usage. Which makes it one of the best for any project that needs speed and high performance. Lighttpd can handle up to 10000 connections in parallel on a single server. Lighttpd is the perfect solution for every server that is suffering speed or performance issues. This free solution is cost-effective and resource-efficient.
Further, this web server solution offers support for almost all popular platforms such as Windows, Linux, Solaris, and macOS. Likewise, Lighttpd is a great deal for embedded systems and has the ability to serve static and dynamic content to multiple users even with limited resources. Known for its security, speed, compliance, and flexibility, Lighttpd is rapidly redefining the efficiency of a webserver.
Lighttpd provides the following prominent benefits:
- HTTP/2 Support
- Support for FastCGI, SCGI, CGI Interfaces
- TLS OCSP Stapling
- mod_proxy makes HTTP/1.1 requests to backends (change from HTTP/1.0)
- Support for using chroot and mod_rewrite
How to Configure Lighttpd?
In this section of this blog post, we explore the steps to configure the Lighttpd. Installing Lighttpd on Ubuntu is very simple and straightforward. Just use the following command and you are good to go
$ sudo apt install lighttpd
You can also install Lighttpd directly from the source. To install from GIT, use these commands
git clone https://git.lighttpd.net/lighttpd/lighttpd1.4.git
cd lighttpd1.4
./autogen.sh
To install from SVN, use these commands
svn checkout https://github.com/lighttpd/lighttpd1.4/trunk lighttpd1.4
Use this command to fetch updates
svn update
To install dependencies, run this command
apt-get build-dep lighttpd
After that, use the configure command as follows
./configure --help
Build using make command
make
After a successful build, now install the package
su make install
Check if Lighttpd is configured and installed properly by visiting the URL http://your-server-ip. You should see the following page
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of this blog post. We have gone through what is Lighttpd? how to configure Lighttpd? and setting up procedure. Lighttpd is a free, high-performance, and open source web server designed for speed-critical environments. The low memory footprint, small CPU load, and speed optimizations make it suitable for servers that are suffering load problems. It is lightweight, secure, and fast compared to other web servers, which makes it one of the best choices for high-performance and speed-critical websites. Lighttpd has a very alive and vibrant community that provides support for issues and queries. There are many oper open source products and relevant blog posts that you can go through that are mentioned in the “Explore” section below. Therefore, this article can really help you if you are looking to opt for an open source web server for your business.
Finally, containerize.com has been writing on further open source products. Please stay in touch with this Web Server Solution Stacks category for regular updates. Moreover, you can follow us on our social media accounts Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Explore
You may find the following links relevant: