WAMP server question

[rufee]

Hey guys,

So ive assembled a machine that will serve as my web server for a little project im working on. And I want to ask what kind of apache modules should I run etc...

I don't want to use wampserver, xampp or any of those pre-made solutions, because I want control over what I install, I had done this before just a very long time ago and stuff has changed since then so what are your recommendations for a wamp box, what are you running ?

And im running windows because im not yet ready to move to linux :(

Thanks.

[azeotrope]

And I want to ask what kind of apache modules should I run etc...

As few as possible. Have a look at the modules that run by default and figure out which ones of those you need and ditch the rest. If you're running fairly basic stuff with your own server side scripting or just static pages, then you should look at running a lighter weight web server such as NGINX or lighttpd. If you give more details on what you're hosting and/or the scripting languages you're using, I'm sure you'll get some more help.

[rufee]

Basically all I need is to have php+mysql available, there will be 2 websites on it. Well NGINX is new, I though that was some kind of apache module hehe :D

[azeotrope]

are you running some kind of web app or are you writing all you're own code? If you write your own, I'd definately say to go for NGINX or lighttpd. If not, you'll should probably run mod_security on apache to protect against SQL injection and XSS in case of vulnerabilities. assuming your own code is secure of course ;).

[rufee]

Yeah i write my own code, it probably has some holes (what code doesn't eh ?), does NGINX have any "module" for that ?

[azeotrope]

Basically you just need to you use some kind of fast cgi implementation for php on NGINX. I'm not very familiar with how this works on windows, but this and this should be a good start.

As for security, If you are putting any user input into a database or getting data out based on input, you should validate everything thoroughly. There is quite a lot of info floating around the web on how to do this. the stripslashes inbuilt function in PHP is a good start.

[rufee]

Thanks alot :) I try to take filtering user input seriously in any application i write.

[rufee]

Oh by the way, might you know of any good and free SMTP server ?

[azeotrope]

I've heard that hmailserver is pretty decent. Many windows guys seem to prefer it over the IIS mail server