Crackers:
Web servers are not the best thing to break, especially Apache. It is fairly secure, and the most of biggest exploits have been denial of service (segmentation faults, causing the http server to go offline).
Admins:
On Linux, there is really no competition for the web server market. Apache wins from every perspective.
My personal choice is the Apache 1.3.x branch: It is stable, it has been around for a long time, it is the standard!
Why not Apache 2.x? The 2.x branch may be useful in situations where it is needed, however it’s main bonux is threading – which is still deemed (possibly) incompatible with PHP!
Installing Apache is simple, whether it is plain, or has PHP, etc.
To install apache, download the source tarball of the latest stable version, extract it, and run these commands:./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache --enable-module=so make make install
Giving each command some time, Apache will be installed into /usr/local/apache. DSO support will also be enabled, allowing you to install PHP later.
For instructions on installing PHP, please see the PHP Website, goto the Manual and look under Installation ( Servers – Apache ).
Apache is a fairly secure program, even with it’s default configuration. I’m not going to explain the configuration of Apache here, as there are many things I could write, and it isn’t really the point of this tutorial ;)
