The Apache HTTP Server Project is an effort to develop and maintain an open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows. The goal of this project is to provide a secure, efficient and extensible server that provides HTTP services in sync with the current HTTP standards.
The Apache HTTP Server (“httpd”) was launched in 1995 and it has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April 1996. It has celebrated its 20th birthday as a project in February 2015.
Apache supports a variety of features, many implemented as compiled modules which extend the core functionality. These can range from server-side programming language support to authentication schemes. Some common language interfaces support Perl, Python, and PHP. Popular authentication modules include mod_access, mod_auth, mod_digest, and mod_auth_digest, the successor to mod_digest. A sample of other features include Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security support (mod_ssl), a proxy module (mod_proxy), a URL rewriting module (mod_rewrite), custom log files (mod_log_config), and filtering support (mod_include and mod_ext_filter).
The Apache HTTP Server is a project of The Apache Software Foundation. The Apache HTTP Server Project is a collaborative software development effort aimed at creating a robust, commercial-grade, feature-rich and freely available source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server. The project is jointly managed by a group of volunteers located around the world, using the Internet and the Web to communicate, plan, and develop the server and its related documentation. This project is part of the Apache Software Foundation. In addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas, code, and documentation to the project.
In 2009, it became the first web server software to serve more than 100 million websites. As of September 2016, Apache was used by 51.8% of all websites worldwide. Apache can also run concurrently with other web servers (such as proxy servers).
QuikSite uses Apache in conjunction with NGNIX as a reverse proxy web server, running PHP with FastCGI served by Apache.
