Configure a secure, fast, flexible and very lightweight web server. Lighttpd is best suited for low memory servers and websites that require high performance and efficiency.
Lighttpd web server is a free and open source lightweight solution stack, designed specially for Linux machines. We will cover following sections in this tutorial:
What is Lighttpd?
Compared to other web servers like Apache and Nginx, Lighttpd web server has a small memory footprint, so it provides effective management of the cpu-load. This lightweight web server provides advanced feature set 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 support other programming languages including Python, Perl, Ruby and many more.
Benefits of Lightpd
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. Known for it’s security, speed, compliance, and flexibility, Lighttpd is rapidly redefining efficiency of a webserver.
How to Configure Lighttpd?
Installing Lighttpd on Ubuntu is very simple and straightforward. Just use following command and you are good to go
$ sudo apt install lighttpdYou can also install Lighttpd directly from source. To install from GIT, use these commands
git clone https://git.lighttpd.net/lighttpd/lighttpd1.4.git
cd lighttpd1.4
./autogen.shTo install from SVN, use these commands
svn checkout https://github.com/lighttpd/lighttpd1.4/trunk lighttpd1.4Use this command to fetch updates
svn updateTo install dependencies, run this command
apt-get build-dep lighttpdAfter that, use the configure command as follows
./configure --helpBuild using make command
makeAfter a successful build, now install the package
su make installCheck if Lighttpd is configured and installed properly by visiting the URL http://your-server-ip. You should see following page
Conclusion
Lighttpd is a free, open-source, and high-performance 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 choice for high-performance and speed-critical websites.
